Sewage Spills in the Derwent
This is the Hooley Town pumping station on Bakewell Road in Matlock and it is responsible for pumping foul sewage to the sewage treatment works at Lea, near Cromford.
It is not a recently constructed piece of Severn Trent Water infrastructure and it is clearly working near the limit of its design capacity.
On 91 different occasions in 2024 that capacity was reached and it discharged sewage into the River Derwent for a total of 818 hours. Severn Trent Water acknowledges that this was not due to any malfunction but simply that the pumps could not cope with the volume of sewage when storm water entered the combined sewerage system.
If this is the situation now, what happens when more houses are built (or front gardens paved over for extra parking)?
If we consider the final destination of all this sewage, the situation is even more worrying.
The Lea Sewage Treatment Works, a few miles further down the sewage pipeline, discharged into the same river 123 times in 2024 for a total of 1773 hours.
It is time for some honest answers from both the Lead Local Flood Authority (part of the County Council) and Severn Trent Water when they are consulted on new housing developments because unless they have plans for some extensive upgrades to their existing system, then pollution of the Derwent will only get worse.
