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Bathing Water Season Begins!

Wednesday 15 May marks the start of the bathing water season and more than 400 bathing waters in England will undergo regular testing between now and the end of September. Last year 97.9% of bathing waters met the minimum standard and of those, 388 achieved the highest standards of Excellent and Good.

There are four classifications of bathing waters; Excellent, Good, Sufficient or Poor.

We want to encourage everyone to check the water quality before swimming. At designated bathing waters, signs are put up by the local authority displaying current classifications as well as other useful information. Information is also available online on the Environment Agency’s Bathing Water Data Explorer website.

Surfers Against Sewage has relaunched their Safer Seas Service app for the start of the bathing season. The app provides subscribers with water quality information on the go. It uses open data from across the UK and water company updates to provide real-time water quality alerts for over 350 locations around the UK.

Thanks to continued investment and action from Defra, Environment Agency, water companies, local councils, communities and environmental organisations, the standards at our bathing waters remain high, however there’s always more we can do and everyone can play a part.

We support #BinIt4Beaches campaigns in raising awareness and encouraging positive actions that everyone can take to help maintain and improve the quality of our beaches and bathing waters.

So whether it’s taking steps to ensure leftover cooking fats and oils are scraped into the food waste recycling or bin, only flushing the 3Ps – pee, poo and paper, bagging and binning dog mess or ensuring you put all your litter in the bin, it’s a step in the right direction to protecting our beautiful English coastline and inland lakes.

Join in the conversation and find out how you can help by following #BinIt4Beaches on Twitter.

We’ve been selected for Tesco Bags of Help!

We are thrilled to announce that our two minute beach boards have been selected for the Tesco Bags for Help grant! This means we are one of three projects now in the running to receive between £1,000 – £4,000.

From May, Tesco customers will be able to vote for their favourite project at stores across Fylde (details below). If we get the most votes, which we are sure we will, this means we will be able to pay for eight more beach clean boards for the Fylde Coast, which means cleaner beaches!

Voting takes place from Wednesday 1st May to Sunday 30th June, so make sure you pick up your tokens at your local store and vote for us!

The participating stores across Fylde are:

Blackpool Tesco Extra – FY4 4UJ
Tesco Express Blackpool Whitegate – FY3 9BZ
Cleveleys Metro – FY5 1BS
Tesco Express, Ansdell Road, Blackpool – FY1 6PU
Tesco Express, Lytham Road – FY1 6ET
Tesco Express, St Annes – FY8 3BN
Tesco Express, South Shore, Blackpool – FY4 2JD
Tesco Express, St David Road, Blackpool – FY8 2JU
Tesco Express, Central Drive Blackpool – FY1 5DY
Tesco Express, Bispham, Blackpool – FY2 0AF
Tesco Express, Marton, Blackpool – FY3 9JW
Tesco Express, Fleetwood – FY7 7DZ
Tesco Express, Poulton le Fylde – FY6 7EP
Tesco Express, Lytham St Annes – FY8 5EW
Tesco Express, Thornton Marsh – FY5 4AF
Tesco Express, Blackpool Westcliff Drive – FY3 7DR
Tesco Express, Martin Drive, Blackpool – FY4 3EU
Tesco Express, Lytham St Anne Road – FY8 1SE
Tesco Express,Warton Lytham Road – PR4 1AD

To find out the location of any of the above stores, please visit Tesco’s store locator.

Be a good egg this Easter!

This Easter, people across the country will be preparing a delicious roast dinner for the family. Thousands of families will also be putting on their wellies and visiting their local beach for the fresh sea air and to walk off their dinner and maybe a few Easter eggs.

Did you know that by not cleaning up after your roast dinner properly you could be damaging the water quality at your local beach?

If you pour used cooking fat, meat juices or leftover food down the sink (even with hot water and washing up liquid) the fat soon sets hard in the cold pipes. When it mixes with other unflushable items, such as wet wipes and sanitary products, it creates what is known as a ‘fatberg’.

Recent news headlines have shown just how monstrous the fatbergs beneath our feet can become. South West Water discovered a 64 metre-long fatberg in Sidmouth, Devon, while United Utilities came across an 80 metre long fatberg beneath the streets of Liverpool. And who can forget the discovery in 2017 of the Whitechapel Fatberg weighing in at 130 tonnes and measuring 250 metres in length?

Diets and lifestyles have changed dramatically since the first sewers were built in the 19^th century. As fatty and fast food consumption has increased, so has the fat in our sewers. Fatbergs clog sewerage pipes and stop the waste water reaching the treatment works as intended. This means the risk of sewage spilling out into homes, streets, rivers and seas is substantially increased.

This Easter we’re asking people to be a good egg and help keep beaches and seas clean by making sure all leftover cooking fats and oils are put in the food waste recycling or bin rather than poured down the sink.

Here’s some simple steps you can follow:

Scrape or pour leftover fat from roasting trays and pans into a heat resistant container then recycle or bin it once cooled
Wipe out grease left in pans with kitchen roll before washing
Use a sink strainer to catch any greasy food scraps

#Binit4beaches

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Water quality

The Environment Agency monitors bathing waters – stretches of sea or lake where many people swim and paddle – to assess whether they meet the strict standards of the European Bathing Water Directive. The standards are set to protect public health and the environment from pollution.

The Environment Agency takes 20 water samples at each bathing water between May and September each year and post the information online: http://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/

The samples are tested for certain types of bacteria: escherichia coli (E.coli) and intestinal enterococci, which are not directly harmful but indicate the presence of pollution. The bacteria are found in the intestines of animals and humans and pass through the body in poo. High levels of bacteria = poor water quality.

However, the water may be cleaner on the actual day you visit the beach, as the quality can change, particularly after heavy rain washes pollution into rivers and the sea. Look out for daily forecasts at some beaches.

Each beach is also given an annual classification. From 2015 this is based on sample results over the previous four years, e.g. 2015 results use data from 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. 2016 results use data from 2013 to 2016 and so on. The classifications are:

Excellent

The standard is the highest, cleanest class

Good

Generally good water quality

Sufficient

The water meets the minimum standards

Poor

Bathing is not advised at this beach as water quality has not met sufficient standards

If a bathing water is classed as Poor, you are advised not to bathe because samples taken over the previous four years have been affected by pollution. This does not mean the beach is closed – you can still enjoy everything the beach has to offer.

If a water sample has high levels of bacteria, analysis is done to estimate* the sources of pollution and work is planned in the area to improve water quality. When this work is significant and is expected to help improve bathing water quality, the four years of data for the annual classification starts from the time the work is completed and sample data from before the work are not included. This is called step change.

*Estimates are based on computer modelling, DNA analysis, and knowledge of the local area. The estimates can never be perfect because pollution to bathing waters changes from day to day depending on the season, the tides and the weather.