Sewage scandal: Former teacher 'poisoned' after surfing at popular beach in Cornwall where raw waste 'keeps on pumping into'

A Cornwall resident said he is “absolutely outraged” at the amount of raw sewage being pumped onto his local beach since July. William Howells told NationalWorld he has been “sick since the end of July” after a “quick surf” at his local beach, Harlyn Bay in Cornwall, and suffered “three days of awful gastroenteritis”. 

The former teacher said he suffered a massive STEMI heart attack 16 October last year whilst he was out surfing and so after his months of cardio rehab “to be poisoned by human excrement that just keeps on pumping I am absolutely outraged.” He added: “When young girls paddling at the back of the beach end up on a drip in hospital over a bank holiday weekend it makes one rather angry.”

On the Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) interactive map, which shows where sewage discharges are occurring on a daily basis, it has revealed that raw waste has been pumped into Harlyn Bay multiple times since the summer. Today (Monday 11 December) there is yet another alert on SAS’ map. It reads: “Storm sewage has been discharged from a sewer overflow in this location within the past 48 hours.”

Jesse Jones McCool, who lives in Newquay in Cornwall, shared how he spent six weeks at Harlyn Bay over the summer and there were “sewage discharges every two days from the end of July through a lot of August”. He added: “Spent my time warning holiday makers, families and children playing in the s***. Was sick, diarrhoea and rough for three days. MP wasn’t interested at all, he asked me to stop tagging him in on each pollution discharge from the SAS App, absolute joke, will never surf at Harlyn again.”

Mr Howells shared pictures to NationalWorld showing the public access by the beach with people walking alongisde a stream which he said is "full of discharge". He said: "That’s the public access to the beach … through the stream full of discharge".

South West Water told NationalWorld that there is no evidence that the sickness reported were due to its operations and there are a whole host of reasons why people may become unwell after entering rivers and seas, such as agricultural runoff, dog waste and even swallowing water. It adds that it takes stories like this very seriously and it is launching WaterFit Live and completing 100% monitoring across all of its storm overflows ahead of government requirements. The water firm said it will be investing to dramatically reduce its use of storm overflows and reduce our impact on rivers by one-third by 2025.