Back to the Future

My elderly mother recently found a copy of a 1996 Brighton Evening Argus article about the formation of the local SAS group. I was the local rep at the time and there were enough local activists to start the first local SAS group outside Cornwall in the country. We were fighting for an end to Southern Water's 'pump and dump' approach.

20 years later my long curly brown hair is short and grey, but I'm about to become a local SAS rep again. The EU referendum result has fired me up to start campaigning again in a bigger way. The Bathing Water Directive, which provides the protection of minimum standards, was never translated into UK law so when we leave the EU it may no longer apply.

I want to help build local opposition to any idea that bathing water standards should be relaxed. So it's back to the future.

A 25th birthday present for SAS...or back to the 90s?

SAS Campaigners with their inflatable turd in the 1990s. From SAS website

After a fantastic 25 years of Surfers Against Sewage campaigning for clean seas, it's most fitting that a revised Bathing Water Directive comes into force this year. This means that it will be harder for beaches to pass the minimum tests and to reach the top European standard. It also means more beaches will fail the new tests. Good things about the Directive mean that test reults will be posted on an Environment Agency website within 24 hours and Councils should tell people not to bathe when a beach has failed.

But...but, but  the tests are still only done May to September, do not necessarily reflect where people surf and some water companies refuse to use automatic monitors to let us know when combined sewers are operating because there isn't a 'Blue Flag' beach nearby. Also, if a beach fails a test because of heavy rain and overflowing combined sewers, the results can be discounted (up to a certain number of times in any year).

So there are still potentially lots of battles for SAS to fight - for tighter standards, year round testing, testing where surfers and other water-users need it and less flexibility to ignore bad results.

It looks like SAS will still need that inflatable turd after all.