Residents and environmental groups are calling for urgent action to save the River Grom, alongside local MP Mike Martin whose described the spill "ridiculous."
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00:00Through Tunbridge Wells runs the River Grom, a gentle, winding stream that weaves quietly
00:05through the countryside. But beneath the surface, something is deeply wrong. A nearby manhole
00:11is being choked with overgrown tree roots and has therefore been prone to overflowing.
00:16This means that it's pushed more than 333 hours worth of sewage into the river since
00:21last summer. Underground sewage pipes are also failing, with leaks spilling untreated
00:27waste into the waterway. Due to hundreds of hours worth of sewage both being pumped into
00:32this river and flowing into it from a nearby manhole, the Ripple Effect team who tests the
00:36water have found that much of it is covered by sewage fungus, which both pollutes the air
00:40and kills both the plants and animals. Funny enough, today is actually, we think,
00:45the worst results we've seen. The sewage that's being pumped into the river is actually killing
00:51everything so the water, the river is actually dead. Apart from things that you don't want
00:57to see, which are mosquito, larvae, red worms, water louse, all animals that will live in
01:04really highly polluted river. And we're seeing a heck of a lot of them today. I'm not an expert
01:10in sewage fungus, but I would say that is sewage fungus and that's kind of like the end game
01:15in a river's health. Due to the number of complaints of smells and leaks, the problem
01:21has sparked political action. Yeah, so in 2024, Southern Water, which deal with the sewage
01:28in my patch, pumped 300,000 hours of sewage into our waterways. And this is ridiculous.
01:35It's not on. It's indicative of a water industry, but also the government and OffWatt, the regulator,
01:40who've lost a grip on the problem. We shouldn't be having a situation where that much sewage is
01:45being pumped into our rivers and killing them, like this river here. So Southern Water have assured
01:49me, we brought it to their attention and they've assured me that they're going to be sending
01:53a robot down that to clear out the tree roots and then they're going to reline the sewer,
01:58which should mean that normal flow should go through it to the water treatment plant.
02:02We've been entrusted with 50 million pounds of our customers' money to work differently
02:06in the catchments to make sure we are building truly sustainable solutions. We have a team
02:11of engineers who will be in the catchment with our supply chains investigating. But it's not
02:16a simple fix. Mike Martin says part of the challenge is that no one technically owns much of the
02:22ageing sewage network, some of which dates back centuries.
02:25There are a number of problems and this is one of them where it's not clear who owns the
02:29sewer and it's something that the government needs to lay down legislation on to say actually
02:34who is it that's going to own all of the sewer network because that makes it easier for
02:38us to repair it and to fix the problems that we have.
02:41With water bills set to rise by almost 50% in 2025, campaigners hope that this issue will
02:46be fixed sooner rather than later.
02:49Kristen Hawthorne for KMTV in Tunbridge Wells.