Visitors to the tourist town found brown water and foul smells this weekend
The water at Hornsea on Saturday, August 22.(Image: David Rhodes)
Concerns have been raised about seawater at an East Yorkshire beach. Visitors to Hornsea Beach this weekend found brown coloured water and described the smell of sewage at the Blue Flag beach which is in the midst of its key tourism season.
Pictures from Saturday afternoon (August 22) show suspected sewage being washed ashore at the kilometre long beach. Hornsea resident David Rhodes, a campaigner for cleaner water at the seaside resort, alerted the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Water to the issue.
Yorkshire Water said it has since raised what it calls a Pollution Service Event and has dispatched a team to the town for further investigations – though it has not yet determined what caused the dirty water which could still be seen on Sunday (August 23). The company’s own interactive maps show a combined sewer overflow into the sea was used for four minutes on Friday afternoon.
Speaking about water quality at the beach, Mr Rhodes said: “It’s especially important because most of the businesses in the town rely on the beach for visitor income, and particularly during the summer.”
He added: “What I’m trying to do in Hornsea is to get Yorkshire Water to invest in the town. The town is expanding and every time it rains we seem to get sewage releases here.
“It leads me to the conclusion that the infrastructure is not satisfactory to deal with the rain – and it’s not even storm incidents, it’s just when it rains.
“I go out quite regularly to fish from a boat and I’ve noticed the fish stocks have definitely declined. We used to be able to go out and get 100 mackerel in a day but now we’re struggling to get 10 or 12. I don’t have the scientific background to be able to say that is because of the pollution but it is a concern, and particularly for a holiday resort.”
Hornsea Beach’s Blue Flag was awarded only early this year. The status follows ‘excellent’ water quality results from the beach, with the Government’s Swimfo website showing ‘excellent’ classification stretching back to 2022.
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