BeachPeople Ocean Sports and  Fitness
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Dangerous Boats

BeachPeople's Badboats campaign is focused on the ecological damage that derelict glass fibre boats do to the environment, and how to resolve that.

The obvious area where we would like to recover the sunken and beached boats around Poole Harbour to has been occupied by a collection of derelict ex-fishing boats for a considerable time that in some cases represent clear risk to life.

This is a good example (below) - the heavy fishing vessel is supported on a slope that falls away to the the cycle path and footpath and supported by a flimsy wedge seemingly held together by a single woodscrew.

If the wedge gives way then then boat will kill anyone it falls on.

The derelict boats need removing certainly, but for the area to not be fenced off and the boats left with such lack of care applied to the safety of the public is a shocking oversight.

BeachPeople reported this to Dorset police via 101 and then 999 at 17:52pm (incident #528) but it should not be up to us to monitor these things as they are so obviously dangerous.

Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for originals of these photos


14th Feb 2023 17:24

Drinking Water Fountain on Kite Beach

BeachPeople's 4th campaign is to have a free drinking water fountain installed at Kite Beach to help reduce the amount of single use plastic water bottles that pile up around the bins each hot day during the summer.


Campaigns

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BeachPeople first started out in 2016 as an ocean sports club for adults, plain and simple. Then Covid hit and group activities went out of the window. Rather than sit around waiting for lockdown to end we hunted around to find a way to make a positive difference to our local seas and beaches.

As a result we have three campaigns:

Designating Whitley Lake as a Bathing Water by Defra

This in a small way attempts to reduce the amount of sewage discharged into Poole Harbour by designating Whitley Lake, Kite Beach, Sandbanks as a bathing water so that it is sampled 20 times per bathing season by the EA

Water Quality Display on Kite Beach

This is intended to display bathing water quality, results of the EA tests and BeachPeople's own tests etc.

Derelict Boats In Poole Harbour

This we call Badboats - it aims to have all the derelict glass fibre boats removed from Poole and Christchurch harbours to prevent the non biodegradeable strands of fibre becoming a permanent and damaging part of the ecosystem. IT is a joint collaboration between BCP Council, Poole Harbour Commission and BeachPeople.

Drinking Water Fountain on Kite Beach

BeachPeople are working with Wessex Water and Cllr Mark Anderson of BCP Council to have a water fountain installed at Kite Beach, Sandbanks in order to cut down on single use plastics whils pile up around the bins on busy days

If you feel the campaigns are worthy of your support then you can make a donation of any amount here.

If you only wish to contribute to one specific campaign please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water Quality Display on Kite Beach

BeachPeople are campaigning to have an A1-sized lectern installed at Kite Beach to inform beachgoers (who often number over 450 in the summer) about the recent water quality with particular focus on raw sewage discharge.

We test the water regularly in the summer for E. Coli and Enterococci and display the results on our website (RHS widget) but feel that it would be more helpful to make that data and others readily available to the public

The board would display:

  • Recent BeachPeople water quality results
  • Details of the most recent nearby raw sewage discharges by Wessex Water
  • Information gleaned from the nascent WW AI system
  • BeachPeople campaign updates, eg:
    • Our campaign to have Whitley Lake, Kite Beach designated as a bathing water
    • Our Badboats campaign to have the polluting derelict glass fibre boats removed from the Harbour and disposed of.

Funding may come from our recent CIL application but if not then it will be sourced from BeachPeople club fund and from donor support.


Untreated (Raw) Sewage Discharges into the Sandbanks Area of Poole Harbour

Data from the Wessex Water Coastwatch system. The feed isn't infallible - some alerts are erroneous and several overlap so you might see three 'Starts' and only one 'Stop' for example, but it gives you an idea of how much raw sewage is being pumped into Poole Harbour. Remember - this is just for the four CSOs in the Sandbanks area - the main outfalls are all in Holes Bay - two dozen CSOs licenced to pump 44,000 metric tons of treated sewage each day into the water and unmonitored (and therefore unlimited) amounts of raw sewage when Wessex Water deem the rain to be 'heavy'. This is a list of the raw sewage discharges.

The 2022 Surfers Against Sewage Water Quality Report's introduction summaries the situation neatly:

The UK is riddled with a crumbling network of sewage pipes that leak and overflow beneath our feet. Our combined sewerage network mixes both sewage effluent and surface water runoff to be treated at one of the thousands of wastewater treatment plants dotted around the country. This system can become overwhelmed at times of heavy rainfall. Over 23,000 sewage overflows, installed throughout the network, are designed to take the pressure off the system when it becomes overloaded, preventing overflowing drains and sewage backing up into our homes. However, these overflows release a chemical cocktail of sewage pollution, agricultural pollution, contaminants from roads, household chemicals, and rainwater directly into our rivers and the ocean. They are therefore intended to be for emergency use only, during periods of ‘exceptionally heavy rainfall’.



The Surfers Against Sewage 2022 Water Quality Report that states Wessex Water discharged only 215 hours over the whole of its cachent area - this is because Kite Beach is not yet designated as a Bathing Water and as such nearby discharges are not included in their figures. The BeachPeople Whitley Lake Campaign aims to change this.


On our widget (right hand column), discharge data shown is for the current month and limited to the small number of CSOs around Sandbanks that we monitor. Time shown is the time the discharge ended. Discharges can span days.