Campaigning for bathing water designation and monitoring at Watchtower Bay won't get far, judging from NRW's reply to local Friends of the Earth.

They say it makes no difference that many people are swimming and kayaking, and it is unlikely that storm discharges could be stopped without radical changes to sewage infrastructure and significant investment.

Using the "storm" excuse for discharges from the Knap outfalls won't wash. 
Last century's Barry Town" so-called sewage works just screened out paper and macerated the sewage before discharging it from the short Knap outfall. 

This was supposed to end with the pumping of the sewage over to the Cog Moors sewage works. 

Though the Barry Town discharge is permitted only as a storm outfall in case of exceptional weather, Welsh Water data shows it was used to discharge untreated sewage 65 times last year (source: https://bit.ly/3M72A2l).

This is in addition to the long Knap outfall built in the 1990s that discharged untreated sewage 205 times.

NRW has to be compelled to accept the law that requires sewage to have biological treatment as at Cog Moors, not collude with routine discharging of untreated sewage on the excuse of "radical" infrastructure changes.

Their role is a regulator, to protect Bathing Water and the environment generally, and to dismiss the false excuse of "storm" discharges.

Max Wallis
Barry Friends of the Earth

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