St Nicholas Storm Sewer Overflow

Storm overflow run by United Utilities, discharging into Mill Dam.

Storm overflow on the sewer network Bathing water Shellfish water Liverpool Riverside constituency

Linked bathing water: Wallasey, classified Good 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
No live feed
United Utilities does not publish a live status for this overflow; only the annual figures below are available.

"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
2spills
0.4 h discharging on 2 days · live feed, before 28 Feb via Top of the Poops, not yet official
2025 official
7spills
3.3 h · −59% on 2024
Rank in United Utilities
#1,407
of 2,242 overflows by 2025 spills (1 = most)
Monitor in 2025
100% working
Long-term average 13.1 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 the live feed: our own log of it begins on 28 February, and the discharges before that are Top of the Poops' record of the same feed. The official figure is published next spring.

2023
13 spills · 1.3 hmonitor 100%
2024
17 spills · 4.8 hmonitor 100%
2025
7 spills · 3.3 hmonitor 100%
2026so far
2 spills · 0.4 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.

Twin outlet

United Utilities runs another overflow within 300 m that also discharges into Mill Dam. They share the sewer and the storm, so one outlet's figures are only part of what reaches the water.

0m St Nicholas Lane Pumping StationUUP01829St Nicholas Lane Pumping Station (Site Id Stnic) (Lan0057) 56spills in 2025

This overflow: 7 spills in 2025. Distances are between the published outlet points.

What the 2025 return says

From United Utilities's annual return to the Environment Agency for this overflow.

High-spill review
High spill threshold not met
Long-term review
Not asset maintenance - Hydraulic capacity
Investigation
No investigation activity in reporting period
Improvement work
No improvement action in reporting period
Monitored since
2018
Water body
MERSEY - Transitional

"High spill threshold not met" means this overflow did not spill often enough to trigger the EA's formal high-spill review for that year. It is not a statement that the spills were harmless.

Discharges we have recorded

58 discharge periods since 2 Jan 2024. 55 of them come from United Utilities's own event-duration-monitoring records (published on Stream, Jan 2024 – Nov 2025); this overflow has no live feed, so nothing after that log is held. The official annual count is the figure to quote.

Show 30 earlier (of 58)
StartedEndedDischarge time
1 min
1 min
16 min
2 min
0 min
11 min
1 min
0 min
0 min
2 min
16 min
16 min
0 min
1 min
34 min
1 min
1 min
1 min
1 min
1 h 10 min
1 min
29 min
1 min
1 min
1 min
1 min
17 min
4 min
41 min
10 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 84 raw blocks were merged into 58 continuous discharge periods (gaps under 15 min joined).

Rain nearby last 30 days

Nearest live rain gauge: Rainfall gauge nr Over Kellet, 6.0 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
Skerton Weir (River Lune) · 5.4 km
Nearest rain gauge
Council area
Liverpool District (B)
Site reference
UUP01830 · permit 016930973
Coordinates
54.11206, -2.79969

Concerned about this overflow?

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

Write to the MP

The Environment Agency's return places this overflow in the Liverpool Riverside constituency. An MP can ask the company and the regulator questions on a constituent's behalf. These words carry the official figures; change them as you like.

The link opens Parliament's own "Find your MP", which gives the MP's name and how to write to them. FloodRadar sends nothing and keeps nothing you write. Check the constituency against your own address: an MP acts only for people who live in it.

Annual spill figures: Environment Agency Event Duration Monitoring return, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right, Open Government Licence (OGL) v3.0. Storm-overflow spill events: © the respective water company, published on Stream (data.streamwaterdata.co.uk) under CC BY 4.0. Discharges marked "via Top of the Poops", and this year's figures before 28 February, 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. Constituency and council area from the EA's return: contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026.