The Marine Conservation Society has released its 2012 Good Beach Guide and, while its good news that its recommending more beaches, it failed over 200 beaches because of an appalling hidden amount of run-off from outfalls from streets, agricultural land and other sources. Only a quarter of the 31000 combined sewage overflows have monitoring on them and the MCS has only got the information as the result of Freedom of Information request.
It is stupid that this information isn’t in the public domain and obvious that more pressure needs to be placed on the water companies, highway authorities and others to tell people when the CSOs are operating or when they can be predicted to be operating – based on the amount of rainfall.
