langstone harbour just down the becoming designated. ts will take time. ., ., time. the environment water campaigner— time. the environment water campaigner feargal- time. the environment water campaigner feargal sharkeyl time. the environment water i campaigner feargal sharkey has a question for you that he would like an answer to. i can play this for you. an answer to. ican ala thisfor ou. 2 2, . i can play this for you. who is unha-- i can play this for you. who is unhappy at — i can play this for you. who is unhappy at the _ i can play this for you. who is unhappy at the government i i can play this for you. who is i unhappy at the government because i can play this for you. who is _ unhappy at the government because my policy towards _ unhappy at the government because my policy towards the — unhappy at the government because my policy towards the environment - unhappy at the government because my policy towards the environment and i policy towards the environment and its protection — policy towards the environment and its protectio

i'm here at langstone harbour, on the south coast, a harbour frequently blighted by sewage discharges like regular rule breaking by our water companies. also on the programme... birmingham city council, europe's biggest local authority, has declared itself effectively bankrupt — only essential spending can now continue. the grandfather of sara sharif, the ten—year—old who was found dead at her home in surrey, talks to the bbc in pakistan. and a convoy out of nevada — tens of thousands of revellers finally leave the burning man festival, after torrential rain turned the desert into a quagmire. and coming up on bbc news... mason greenwood trains for the first time with his new club getafe, afterjoining the spainish side on loan for the rest of the season. good afternoon and welcome to the bbc news at 0ne. a bbc investigation suggests that three major water companies in england discharged sewage hundreds of times last year on days when it wasn't raining, which is illegal.

let's speak now to our environment correspondentjonah fisher, who's at langstone harbour in hampshire investigation. this is the combination of a long investigation by a large bbc team, we requested from all nine english water companies into exactly when they had discharged raw sewage into our seas and rivers. _, , ., , and rivers. three companies, thames, wessex and — and rivers. three companies, thames, wessex and southern _ and rivers. three companies, thames, wessex and southern water, - and rivers. three companies, thames, j wessex and southern water, complied with that request, they give us huge amounts of data and that data was then crunched, cross—referenced with weather data. why did we do that? because sometimes, spilling raw sewage into our waterways is legal, the system is under pressure, if there is no other place for that sewage and rainwater to go, it is legalfor sewage and rainwater to go, it is legal for water companies to release it into the rivers or the seas. if the weather is dry, it's very clear that it the weather is dry, it's very clear thatitis the weather is

let's go live to our environment correspondentjonah fisher who's at langstone harbour in hampshire.s. last year, ourwater companies in england released raw sewage into our seas and rivers for 1.75 million hours. sewage was discharged on average 825 times every day. breaking that down still further, that means there was a new sewage discharge, roughly speaking, every two minutes. rural west sussex, and one of southern england's celebrated chalk streams. so here we are, welcome to the river lavant or as we locally call it, the river lav. the river lav. the lav, just full of effluent. rob, a retired businessman, is notjoking. there would be no river lavant in the summer without the treated discharges from the next door sewage plant. when we came it was overflowing, so we had the storm overflow coming out here, untreated sewage coming out here. and we came back a few days later, it was still going on. a few days later, still going on. rob filmed what looks like a white fungus growing on the sewage slick. but why was it spilling? there was no rain on the day the flow began, or on any of

live now to our environment correspondent, jonah fisher at langstone harbour. long and complex investigation done by various different parts of the bbc. but we effectively dead is requested details from all nine english water companies into exactly when they had been spilling sewage, either into rivers and into seas. three of the water companies provided us with that information, thames water, wessex and southern water. we then took a huge amount of data and crunched it with weather data to try and find out when those spills took place during dry weather. as you mentioned, it is legal, but clearly undesirable for water companies to spill raw sewage during wet weather, when they are overwhelmed, when there is too much water in the system, but it is illegal if they do it during dry weather. we crunched all the numbers, we put the data alongside weather data from the met office. we discovered from just from these three companies, something in these three companies, something in the region of 400 potentially illegal spills took place last year. in terms of solution

langston harbour on the south coast earlier this month. four sanitary towels there.p between profit and pollution. regulator 0fwat saying the companies hadn't done enough to tackle pollution, that customer service had got worse, and that they'd failed to maintain a reliable water supply. we think historically companies have been too focused on financial performance and not sufficiently focused on operational performance, which is why we've brought in much stronger incentives and why we're requiring companies to pay back £140 million to customers. bottom of the class is thames, the uk's biggest water company. it did so badly against its targets that it will have to refund £100 million next year. if shared equally among its customers, that's just more than a fiver each. i think e6 is too little, to be honest, i think it should be a bit more. fine that they want to give this token gesture, but to me it is a token gesture and over the long term they need to really sort themselves out. 12 of the water companies will have to pay refunds of varying sizes to their customers

welcome to langstone harbour, the university of portsmouth's marine sciences department.

earlier this week we presented a special programme from langstone harbour in hampshire. jon spoke to improved is that we are now seeing that three quarters of all the measures in order to try and achieve good status is being achieved. that's a substantial increase from where we were and the way that the regulations work you have 20 different factors. if one of them fails, everything fails. well, we've since learned that while we were live at langstone harbour — there was another case of sewage pollution unfolding less than a0 miles away in lyndhurst. tristan pascoe has more. the picturesque late summer scene of a babbling brook feeding the beauly river. but a month ago it was very different. this is raw sewage, hundreds of thousands of litres from the burst sewer main nearby cascading into the beauly river, flooding the entrance to new forest golf club. it was really unpleasant and it actually went on for quite a few days with the lorries and things and it was quite unpleasant here. the videos, which i took myself, shows a significant amount of murky brown water here. what the pictur