An information request for the Portswood Wastewater Treatment Works’ odour management plan has been filed.
Article continues after this message...
Gavin Millar, chair of conservation and campaigning group Friends of the Itchen Estuary, has submitted an Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) request to Southern Water for a copy of the plan for the Portswood site, opposite Riverside Park.
EIR requests are similar to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, with public bodies — which include water companies — generally having 20 working days to respond.
It follows a community meeting in St Denys with Southern Water on January 16, at which concerns were raised about the purported incompleteness of an existing odour management plan, with it said to only include ¾ of the required content.
At the January meeting, where odours were a key theme, a Southern Water representative said they were keen to hold another forum to “get back” on issues raised, but they didn’t directly respond to concerns raised about the plan at the time.
• In other river news, the Friends of the Itchen Estuary report on Facebook that they’ve been conducting further tests for E.coli levels following heavy rain, prior to crowdfunding and paying for accredited laboratory testing “to make the robust case for the sewage plant investment needed to clean up our estuary”.
The group said it’s a “fast way of building our understanding of sewage pollution”. They say results reveal: Itchen Bridge 6,100, Northan Bridge 6,800, and Cobden Bridge 14,000 cfu / 100 ml. For more information see the Facebook thread. The crowdfunder has reached £1,455 of a £3,000 target at the time of writing.