Residents Against Sewer Pollution launch campaign

19 January 2022 | Campaigning

Last week, we reported about how sewage pollution is flowing into waterways in Erewash. Nationally, raw sewage was allowed to enter our waterways 400,000 times last year, for a total of about 3,100,000 hours.

The Golden Brook, which flows from Breaston, through West Park and much of Long Eaton towards Attenborough, where it joins the river Erewash, is routinely polluted with raw sewage during heavy rainfall. West Park in Long Eaton is regularly used to capture flood waters and during heavy storms the park is routinely flooding directly with sewage. Ilkeston fares no better, with untreated sewage entering the Erewash River for a total of 515 hours in the Ilkeston area.

The proximity of the Golden Brook to the children’s play area in West Park is of particular concern, with flood waters polluting the park substantially during extend periods of flooding. The council has to build thousands of new houses, but the current infrastructure can’t cope, and we’re all going to be here when things go wrong.

This practice needs to end, and our Conservative MP voted to continue to let this happen. Local residents in Erewash have put together campaign against this practice that Erewash Labour are supporting – if you’d like to get involved, there’s some things you can do right now:

Join the organising Facebook group here.
Sign the petition here.
Write to Maggie Throup MP about this issue (template letter here)