Man claims 'disgusting' sewage is damaging his home

Will Rees, from Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan, has been seeing raw sewage on his property since 2019 as a result of issues with the pumping station nearby owned by Welsh Water.

Will Rees is furious over having to regularly clean raw sewage from his private water course (Image: Will Rees) Mr Rees has made complaints of the issue, which have covered his property in filth, and left damp, numerous times over the past five years, to both Welsh Water and Natural Resources Wales.

He said: “I’m furious because this is damaging my private property through no fault of my own and it keeps happening.

“I’m regularly spending hours cleaning raw sewage from my property, and I don’t see that anything is being done.

“I feel my complaints are justified and I’m just being ignored. My property is being left in filth and it's disgusting."

Mr Rees claims he has been having to clean up raw sewage seeping and damaging his property (Image: Will Rees) In this year alone, Mr Rees has claimed he has been left with a number of unpleasant items in his water course as a result of issues with the pumping station, including female sanitary products and human excrement.

In this year alone, Mr Rees reported two separate incidents of raw sewage, during which he has seen a number of unpleasant items, such as human waste, in his water course.

He says he has been told that there is an issue with the infiltration system that could take years to resolve, but that Welsh Water are aware of the issue and investigating in-house.

He explained: “I was told that they were going to deal with it, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this disgusting damage has been done to my property."

Mr Rees argues that he feels Welsh Water have “lied” to him about the problems and fixes, and has said the sewage could seep into the nearby River Thaw, potentially causing a bigger problem.

The sewage has been coming from the nearby pumping station (Image: Will Rees) Natural Resources Wales and Welsh Water have confirmed they are working to resolve the pumping station’s problems.

NRW have told the Argus that the station has a permit to discharge only in emergency situations such as a pump failure, but that this has been happening at other times, and an investigation is ongoing.

An NRW spokesperson added: “We have not seen any impact on water quality as a result of any discharge. We have been in contact with the reporter and explained our investigations to date and we will continue to work with DCWW to ensure that the discharge is compliant with the permit. Any enforcement response to the discharge will be concluded after our investigations are complete.”

Welsh Water says that the culvert near to Mr Rees’ property is sometimes unable to cope with the level of water running through it after heavy rain but have said there is no information to suggest there is an impact on any properties.

A spokesperson continued: “We have a Wastewater Pumping Station that is positioned 800 meters away from the property that does spill during heavy rain, due to upstream rainwater infiltration.”