When people are at risk of flooding in Calderdale – an area which has endured several bad floods in the last decade – effluent discharging into the water increases health and clean-up risk, said Coun Steven Leigh.

Coun Leigh (Con, Ryburn) said the council had recently been critical on an all-party basis of the dumping of sewage into Calderdale’s rivers.

Given work done to alleviate flooding, it was paradoxical sewage was allowed to enter the water at times of high rainfall, he told Calderdale Flood Recovery and Resilience Programme Board.

“If some of these places are going to get flooded, surely the dumping of this raw sewage only makes it worse because it is more likely to be tainted with sewage than at quieter times.

“It is not good that it’s happening,” said Coun Leigh.

Yorkshire Water’s Adam Ashman acknowledged there was an issue and said the company has begun taking action to change things.

The overflows were designed to be a pressure relief valve on combined sewers.

So when it rained heavily effluent went into the drains and then, to prevent properties from flooding, those sewer overflows were permitted to discharge into rivers, he said.

“Yes, the release of storm effluent absolutely occurs during periods of high rainfall.

“Those sewer overflows are permitted to discharge into rivers.

“That’s a feature and design of the combined sewer network and we have a plan to start to remove those.

“There’s a lot of them and that plan has started,” said Mr Ashman.

He said a two year initial programme taking in highest discharging storm overflows would be the priority followed by work over the next five years to deal with all storm overflows.

Removing the existing storm overflows would reduce discharge of storm effluent into the water course, said Mr Ashman.

Councillor: Discharge of sewage into rivers at times of heavy rain needs to stop