Dover And Folkestone Waste Water

Storm overflow run by Southern Water, discharging into The English Channel.

Storm discharge at pumping station Bathing water

Linked bathing water: Folkestone, classified Sufficient for 2025. Named in the company’s return to the Environment Agency. A name opens that bathing water’s official profile, with any pollution warning in the season. The classification is the Environment Agency’s for that bathing season, from all its samples there: it is not a reading of the water today, and it does not say what part this overflow played.

Right now
Not discharging
Last discharge ended on (1 day ago).
Times are UK time. Company feed updated 2 min ago

"Not discharging" means the company's monitor reports no discharge right now — not that the water is clean. The feed publishes status only; no discharge volume is measured.

2026 so far
29spills
242 h discharging on 36 days · counted by us, not yet official
2025 official
37spills
172 h · −23% on 2024
Rank in Southern Water
#135
of 970 overflows by 2025 spills (1 = most)
Monitor in 2025
99.5% working
Long-term average 23.1 spills a year

Year by year

The Environment Agency's official annual returns, counted the EA's way (12/24-hour spills). 2026 is our own running count, the same way, from Southern Water's monitor log and the live feed. The official figure is published next spring.

2024
48 spills · 329 hmonitor 100%
2025
37 spills · 172 hmonitor 99.5%
2026so far
29 spills · 242 h

A spill is the EA's 12/24-hour count: the first 12 hours of a discharge count as one, each further 24 hours with discharge as one more. "Monitor" is the share of that year the monitor was working, so a 0 beside a working monitor is a real zero; "no data" means the monitor produced no usable data that year — not zero. Years before 2024 are matched to this site by name and location, because the EA's site IDs changed that year; a monitor figure beside one of them means the outlet's permit confirms the match.

Other outlets here

Southern Water runs 2 other overflows within 300 m that also discharge into The English Channel. They share the sewer and the storm, so one outlet's figures are only part of what reaches the water.

0m Dover And Folkestone Waste WaterSWS00259Elizabeth Street Dover CSO - 110369 19spills in 2025
0m Dover And Folkestone Waste WaterSWS00260Folkestone Junction CSO - 108617 5spills in 2025

This overflow (The Stade Folkestone CEO - 108909): 37 spills in 2025. Distances are between the published outlet points. The names in brackets are Southern Water's own, from its return.

What the 2025 return says

From Southern Water's annual return to the Environment Agency for this overflow.

High-spill review
Not asset maintenance - Hydraulic capacity
Investigation
UWWTR investigation ongoing, Bathing Water and/or Shellfish Water investigation ongoing
Improvement work
No improvement action in reporting period
Monitored since
2016
Water body
Kent South

This overflow spilled often enough to trigger the EA's high-spill review; the review line is the company's own stated reason.

Discharges we have recorded

237 discharge periods since 4 Jan 2021. 235 of them come from Southern Water's own event-duration-monitoring records (from its Rivers and Seas Watch service, Jan 2021 – Oct 2026); the live feed adds anything after that. The official annual count is the figure to quote.

Show 30 earlier (of 237)
StartedEndedDischarge time
1 h 12 min
3 h 52 min
10 h 8 min
4 h 7 min
7 h 21 min
11 h 48 min
20 h 29 min
12 h 6 min
1 h 20 min
4 h 51 min
1 d 0 h
15 h 22 min
11 h 50 min
2 h 45 min
2 d 10 h
1 h 58 min
7 h 3 min
4 h 52 min
13 h 11 min
1 h 10 min
2 h 16 min
6 h 26 min
2 h 33 min
6 h 18 min
4 h 9 min
4 h 9 min
4 h 0 min
33 min
5 h 21 min
4 h 22 min

The year figures above use the EA's 12/24-hour counting method, so they are comparable with the official figures; the monitor log's 282 raw blocks were merged into 237 continuous discharge periods (gaps under 15 min joined).

What the feed showed

FloodRadar's own record of every change of state Southern Water's live feed has shown for this overflow, kept since : 4 states. The feed publishes its status now and its latest discharge, nothing older; the discharges above are read from this. It is here so the figures can be checked.

Show the last 4 states
SeenStatusSinceLatest discharge
Not discharging →
Discharging → no end yet
Not discharging →
Not discharging →

Rain nearby last 30 days

Nearest live rain gauge: Rainfall gauge nr Folkestone, 3.7 km away. Brown shading = when this overflow was discharging; ▼ = a discharge start.

Overflow shading is a timing match, not proof of cause — heavy rain and spills share a trigger. Times come from the water company’s event-duration monitor (site status only; no discharge volume is published).

Where it is

Nearest river gauge
Black Bull Road (Pent Stream) · 1.7 km
Nearest rain gauge
Southern Water's own name for it
The Stade Folkestone CEO - 108909
Site reference
SWS00261 · permit A00661
Coordinates
51.07889, 1.19975

Tell me when this overflow discharges

One message when the company's monitor reports a new discharge here. At most one every 6 hours.

Setting this alert needs JavaScript. The alerts you already have are on your alerts page.

The alert repeats the monitor's status: whether the overflow is discharging, not how much or why. It can only tell you about a discharge that starts after you turn it on.

Concerned about this overflow?

Report pollution you can see or smell to the regulator straight away; the company handles complaints about the overflow itself.

Live status: © Southern Water storm overflow activity data, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Annual spill figures: Environment Agency Event Duration Monitoring return, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right, Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0. Spill-event history: Southern Water's Rivers and Seas Watch release history (riversandseaswatch.southernwater.co.uk), © Southern Water. Shown by FloodRadar: only releases Southern Water marks Genuine and that have ended; those it marks Not Genuine or still has under review are left out. Discharges marked "via Top of the Poops", come from Top of the Poops' record of the same company feed, used under CC BY-SA 4.0: the feed's own start and end times as its pages print them, not their derived hours. Times are shown in UK local time. FloodRadar republishes the monitor's status and the EA's figures; it does not measure discharges itself.