MP slams 'outrageous sewage dumping'

An MP has condemned what he called "outrageous sewage dumping" in the River Mole.

In a video posted online, the Liberal Democrat MP for Dorking and Horely Chris Coghlan said that sewage was "spraying" out of a broken manhole cover, just yards from the River Thames tributary in Brockham.

He added that "loo paper" and "what looks like condoms" were visible in the water.

Thames Water said it had responded to reports of "external sewer flooding" on 6 January and apologised to those affected.

"We will carry out further investigations to understand why the flooding occurred," a Thames Water spokesperson said.

"During this time we will also clean up the surrounding areas," they told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Coghlan said residents were fed up after repeatedly trying to get Thames Water to fix the problem.

"This has been going on for years," he said.

'We're a little upstream from the stepping stones where many people would love to bring their kids to paddle but they just can't because this sewage is being dumped into the river."

Thames Water, the UK's largest water company, publishes near real-time data on storm discharge activity.

In separate incidents, one storm overflow in Chertsey was discharging as of 08:00 GMT on Friday, meaning sewage could be in the River Bourne.

It had been ongoing for 120 hours at the time of publication.

Several other discharges had been recorded in the last 48 hours across Surrey.

In August, Thames Water warned it would not survive unless it was allowed to increase water bills by 59% over a five-year period.

The embattled company had debts of just under £16bn at the end of September.

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