Yarrow Bank pumping station, Kingswear
Bacteria levels can stay raised for 24–48 hours after a spill ends.
This looks like a fault, not a storm.
This overflow has discharged in dry weather 22 times since 2020 — spills with no rainfall to excuse them. Its treatment works is not itself over capacity, so a catchment-wide explanation does not hold. Applied to this record, the two-stage lawfulness test is hard to pass: a recurring dry-weather discharge is not an exceptional circumstance, and where the remedy is routine maintenance the disproportionate-cost exception is hard to run.
How this verdict is reached →The same works has emergency overflows too
All emergency overflows →8 pumping-station emergency overflows feed Dartmouth STW works — raw-sewage relief outlets that should fire only when a pump fails. They are not in this page's feed; between them they have discharged about 2,903 recorded hours.
Its permit
What the environmental permit sets for this overflow — and where the public record is silent, which is itself the finding.
- Pass-forward flow
- Not published
- Spill frequency limit
- None set
- Monitoring tier
- Not published
- Assessment trigger
- Crossed — over 20 spills/year
Is anyone acting on this?
- Install and run event-duration monitoringMonitoringcomplete 2021
- Reduction of spills to meet EnvAct_IMP driversImprovementdue 2030
A physical improvement is committed against this overflow.
What you can do about this one
Ask for the data
Under the Environmental Information Regulations, Yarrow Bank pumping station, Kingswear's telemetry, the works' flow-to-full-treatment setting, and any spill investigations are emissions information — they cannot be withheld on commercial-confidentiality grounds. A written request is the fastest lever.
Get it into the next programme
Investigations that will shape the 2030–35 environment programme must complete by this date. Putting this overflow on the record now — to South West Water and the Environment Agency — is what gets it considered.
Put it in the drainage plan
South West Water's draft Drainage & Wastewater Management Plan goes to a twelve-week consultation. A named overflow with evidence behind it is far harder to leave out.
The record since 2020
22 dry spills and 45 pre-STW spills since 2020. Pick a year to see its events below.
2026: 21 spills · 18 discharge events
Counted spills — the EA's 12/24-hour block method, the basis of the 10-a-year cap. Published annual return where available, computed the same way for the current year. Two ways to count →
Dry spills, every year
22 dry spills since 2020 · showing up to 12
Spilled before its works
45 events since 2020 · started while Dartmouth STW stayed shut
Spills by month — 2026 to date
Dry Wet weatherEvery spill in 2026, most recent first
Each event checked against the nearest rain gauge and against the treatment works’ own overflow. Open any row for its evidence dossier.
Excluded from the counts, classification and flags above — too short to weigh against rainfall, and often an operational blip rather than a genuine discharge. Listed here for completeness. How we know.