Bridlington South Beach: Environment Agency investigating source of pollution at popular Yorkshire beach

In 2022, the Environment Agency rated the water quality at Bridlington's South Beach as poor and advised against bathing there.

Poor is the lowest possible rating under the EA’s classification system. It came after tests found high levels of two types of bacteria: enterococci which live in the intestinal tracts of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and E. coli which lives in the intestines and gut of some animals.

Sources of enterococci can include effluent from wastewater plants, leaking septic systems, stormwater runoff, sewage from boats, waste from dogs and seagulls, or agricultural manure.

Most types of E. coli are harmless, but some strains can cause diarrhea.

There is one sewer overflow which discharges into the sea near Wilsthorpe while a long sea overflow was built in 2014 by Yorkshire Water to transfer discharge from the Gypsy Race watercourse, which flows through the Wolds, 1.1km out to sea.

Part of the mystery is that seven of the eight highest findings of bacteria in 2022 were taken on days when no discharges had occurred that day or 72 hours before.

Yesterday a team from the EA spent the day taking samples of seawater half-hourly from Bridlington South, and hourly from North Beach – where the water quality is “good” - and the harbour. They’ll be taken to the National Laboratory Service in Exeter where they will be analysed and a report issued early next year. The team will be carrying out sampling three more times during the bathing season, which runs until the end of September.

Technical lead Claire Campbell, from the EA, said the samples provided a “snapshot in time” as the tide ebbs and flows and people come and go on the beach.

She said: “It’s an investigation which we are doing this year working with East Riding Council and Yorkshire Water to look why the bathing water dropped from ‘sufficient’ last year to ‘poor’. When we freeze the samples we can look at them in more detail and we can look for DNA markers.

"When we’ve done work previously it has shown that seabirds and human DNA is present in the bacteria. The ultimate aim is to understand what’s driving the poor water quality and work at what kind of solutions might be available to us.”

It comes as the Lib Dems accused water firms of a “scandalous cover-up” after being unable to show much sewage they are pumping into rivers and seas. The party said they’d tried to find out the volume of pollution through Environment Information Regulations – similar to a freedom of information request – but were told that information did not exist.

However Water UK said the claims were “completely false”. A spokesperson said firms were investing billions to deploy 45,000 monitors which would take measurements including oxygen levels and pollutants. Only a handful record volume. Installing more monitors – at a cost to the consumer “would tell us nothing whatsoever about (the) actual impact”.