SWANSEA: Kids were getting sick in the Tawe. Now Torsten Bell wants residents round a table about the water

Children were getting sick after swimming in the Tawe.

The reports reached the Senedd in June. Rebeca Phillips told First Minister’s Questions that residents in the Swansea valley had seen a number of people, many of them children, fall ill after going in the water.

Rhun ap Iorwerth said he was concerned and asked Natural Resources Wales to investigate.

The cause, Mike Hedges told the chamber, sits upstream at Trebanos. The treatment works there cannot separate rainwater from sewage, so when it fills up there are two options.

“The two choices are to let it back up and flood the houses with sewage or release it into the river,” he said.

He told the Senedd that NRW had confirmed the work to stop those regular discharges was not likely to be finished until 2030. He did not think that was acceptable.

Four years is a long time to keep children out of a river.

Torsten Bell wants people in a room about it before then.

The Swansea West MP is holding a public meeting called Turning the Tides on Thursday 8 October, with environmental experts and anti-pollution campaigners speaking about the state of the water and what has worked elsewhere.

Bell said the rivers and beaches were the reason the city exists. “We’re incredibly lucky to have Swansea Bay and the Tawe right on our doorstep,” he said.

“But no-one thinks the state of our water ways is good enough, after decades of underinvestment.”

He said he wanted residents and experts together to share ideas and hear about work already under way, much of it driven by local campaigners.

Sewage, protests and a £1.35m fine: Swansea’s year on the water

There has been plenty of it. Campaigners rallied at Caswell Bay in May, one of more than 50 Surfers Against Sewage protests across the UK that day, after figures showed Welsh Water’s worst decade for pollution.

A year earlier, Gower residents held a “Pooped Off” demonstration outside Welsh Water’s Bishopston treatment works over repeated discharges near Caswell and Brandy Cove.

Nobody officially tests the sea here in winter. NRW’s budget covers May to October, so volunteers have been doing it themselves, a project started by Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi with the Gower Society and scientist Dawn Thomas.

Their second season ran 77 tests at five beaches. Ninety per cent came back good or excellent. Eight found sewage, half of them at Knab Rock in Mumbles after heavy rain.

This winter they could not start until January, because the money ran out. A Swansea manufacturer paid for the test kits.

Welsh Water has been in court over its permits. The company was fined £1.35m, with more than £70,000 in costs, after pleading guilty to breaches covering over 800 non-compliances at around 300 sites in 2020 and 2021.

NRW’s head of operations said the company’s performance had been declining for years and called the prosecution a stark warning.

The regulator has separately ordered it to spend £44.7m fixing its sewage failures, which campaigners called too little, too late.

And of the local beaches graded in the last bathing water classifications, Swansea Bay was the only one not rated excellent. Langland, Caswell, Bracelet Bay, Rhossili and Aberafan all took the top mark. Swansea Bay came in a rung below, at good.

Thursday 8 October, and you need to email first

The meeting is at a level-access venue in Swansea city centre.

Seats have to be booked in advance, by emailing torsten.bell.mp@parliament.uk with a full name and postcode.