Unsafe traces of e-coli reported to have been found in River Medway
Levels of E-Coli are around 3 times greater than what's considered safe
Transcript
00:00 Gillingham Strand is a popular area for dog walking, family trips out and strolls along
00:06 the water.
00:07 But after testing samples from the River Medway, the local Liberal Democrats say the levels
00:12 of E. coli are three times greater than what's considered safe.
00:17 We really want to do something about tearing off what to get to the air together and make
00:22 sure that our waters are clean.
00:24 These kind of tests when you're sampling them yourself, how accurate can they actually be?
00:27 Well of course there are limitations that we can do here.
00:32 This is something that local champions can do.
00:34 So that's why I'm asking Medway Council to do monthly tests here.
00:38 I'm sure if you do professional scientific laboratory tests, the results are actually
00:43 even more challenging than it seems here.
00:46 Medway Council were unavailable for an interview.
00:49 The River Medway doesn't just go through Medway, it also goes through Tunbridge, Maidstone,
00:54 Sheerness and even as far as West Sussex.
00:58 And this is the concern of the local Lib Dems.
01:00 They fear this surrounding water is polluted and if their findings are accurate, we could
01:06 have a much larger problem at hand.
01:09 While most cases of E. coli are harmless, in some situations the bacteria can make you
01:14 quite unwell.
01:16 We all have E. coli in our guts and when it's there it generally doesn't cause any problems
01:22 other than a couple of types of E. coli.
01:24 The difficulty is when you get it into other bits of the body.
01:28 And so if you dump sewage in rivers and then you go swimming or you get contaminated water,
01:32 you can get things like eye infections, ear infections, urinary infections and so on.
01:38 And some of those can be quite serious.
01:40 This comes as nearly 600 million litres of sewage is believed to have been spilt into
01:46 the River Medway in 2022.
01:49 An investigation by Unearth revealed Medway had the second highest number of sewage overflows
01:54 across the South East.
01:56 While the Environment Agency will issue permits allowing water companies to discharge sewage
02:02 in some circumstances, Ofwat regulates the investment and finance side of things.
02:07 Ofwat says they've pushed companies to take action to cut sewage discharges and have announced
02:12 new measures to penalise companies failing to monitor storm overflows.
02:17 The Environment Agency say they take all pollution incidents extremely seriously.
02:22 If they find evidence of wrongdoing, they'll take appropriate action, keeping enforcement
02:26 options under constant review.
02:29 With locals concerned for the condition of the River Medway, they're hoping to see the
02:33 quality of the water at safe levels.
02:36 And they're hoping to see change soon.
02:39 Sophia Akin for KMTV in Medway.