Reader letter: Steps to ease Felpham area sewage crisis ‘don’t go far enough’

It was good to read (Observer, May 26) there are steps to ease the drainage and sewage crisis in the area.

However, they don't go far enough or attack the problem from its source.

A group of farmers and amenity managers, of which I am one, have been attempting to pull together those responsible, including the Environment Agency and Southern Water, for solving the problem for over two years now, although Covid rather interrupted any progress we may have made.

It is quite a long story, so please bear with me.

We farm or manage land just north of Bognor along the Aldingbourne, Lidsey (not Lydsey) and Ryebank Rifes, which all join up at Felpham before the water is supposed to drain into the English Channel through the sea wall outfall at Butlin’s.

It also carries the sewage, either treated or raw into the sea when the tide is low or the pumps are working.

Our issue is that because of the almost total neglect of these waterways by the EA since the mid 1990s they have become excessively silted up – in one place it has been measured at over 40 inches of silt.

As a consequence, when we have very wet conditions, there is a huge build up of water to get away to the sea.

But it simply cannot, because the lower reaches of the Aldingbourne Rife – by this stage the main and only water course – is so restricted the water, including sewage, has to go to the lowest point available. That is upstream, where it ‘backs up’ (raises water levels) on to what was historically known as Flansham Brooks and then beyond, out towards Yapton, Barnham and, to the east, Bilsham and Elmer.

At this stage all these individual rifes flood, and the whole area, which is increasingly being built upon comes under extreme and increasing pressure to flood. But what does the EA do about it? Nothing.

In the meetings we have had, one chaired by Mr Gibb himself, the only thing we have heard from the EA is, “We have no funds”. But where does all their money go to? So where should it be used?

When the Somerset Levels had such severe flooding some nine to 10 years back, the excellent Environment Secretary/ Minister Owen Patterson took matters in hand and brought in excavators and dredged the River Parrett back to its original depths and immediately solved the problem. It should have been a lesson, but nothing seems to have been learned.

What appears to be the main concern to the agency are water voles and crested newts. The EA seem to see their role as pulling on their boots and high-viz jackets and checking for these creatures, which can swim very well, rather than organising drainage maintenance?

Now Mr Gibb appears to have been rather waylaid, by somebody, to divert attention away from the question of the unmaintained rifes to the sewage issue? Certainly, there is a big problem with the sewage but its a nation-wide problem, bigger than our area. The stuff has to go out to sea and very preferably treated, after all it is mainly liquid once treated. But if our rifes/ rivers are not maintained and desilted the system breaks down. Good land upstream is flooded and polluted, newly built houses are put at great risk, footpaths and amenity areas are unusable.

And going back to the problem we as farmers here are facing is that we are being told by local authorities that it is to be our responsibility to maintain the rife bordering our own land. Obviously our own ditches are our responsibility but if we go ahead and clean them they will simply fill up with sewage-filled water! The rife must first be cleaned, to run as designed.

Yet, when the crucial outfall area, from the Arun Leisure Centre in Felpham to the seawall, is either council-owned, or owned by individual house owners, and the EA have neglected it for some 26 years, there seems no chance this vital stretch will ever be cleaned, until Bognor and Felpham are inundated.

There is one other problem here: The very vital lower portion of the rife has been concreted over to make a car park for Butlin’s. Access to clean it out can only be by small barges or by suction pipes? And who was responsible for giving Butlin’s permission to concrete the waterway over? Good question, I think, but no answers are forthcoming and a lot of ‘buck will doubtless be passed’.

It is a ‘proper mess’. Southern Water, responsible for sewage treatment, are hosting a meeting in June to ‘kick the ball up the road’, while the matter of dredging the neglected rifes, particularly Ryebank and Lidsey, is being quietly swept aside. All the while too many big salaries are being paid to people who are neglecting responsibility and one day, very soon, there is going to be a major disaster in the area.

Yet more and more houses are being built around the area of Yapton, Barnham, Ford, Eastergate and Fontwell, all discharging some 40 to 50 gallons of waste water and sewage a day into a system that is already unable to cope.

I could go on, but we who are involved here can only hope there is someone, within the local government structure, who just absorbs some of this.

See also: MP questions untreated waste water discharge to Bognor Regis coast

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