WaterFit - Investing in the region's future
Going further, faster 
We recognise there is work to do, and we plan to do it.
Over 10 million visitors come to the South West every year, in addition to the 2.3m people that live in the region. We want the South West to be the destination for water quality.
We’re delivering our largest environmental investment programme for 15 years, including over £330 million in our wastewater network from 2022-25.
Our WaterFit programme sets out our commitments and plans to deliver more for our beautiful South West region.
Some of the things we’re doing are:
- Increasing storm storage at our treatment works and installing monitors at all our storm overflow locations to help reduce the number of times wastewater is discharged straight into rivers and seas
- Separating combined sewers into foul and surface water sewers to reduce the amount of rainwater being processed at our treatment works
- Upgrading, improving, and even relocating, sites to protect them from rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and demand changes
- Collaborating with landowners on a wide range of land management solutions which will help keep our rivers healthy
- Making our sites more wildlife friendly in our ground management techniques and protecting the wildlife like bats, birds and unique plants and insects that already live there.
By 2050, we’ll remove around 1,470 hectares of surface water, install an additional 510,000m3 of storage, and upgrade over 3,000km of sewers and over 110 wastewater treatment works.
You can read more about these improvements in our draft Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan (DWMP)
Your Beach, Your Say, Our Investment
Investment plans
We know you expect the beautiful coastal bathing waters of Devon and Cornwall to be our number one priority. You’ve told us that you want us to go further and faster to reduce the operation of our storm overflows at those bathing waters. And so do we.
We’ve made a commitment to reduce spills from overflows to an average of 20 per year by 2025 across the region. We’re also investing at bathing waters to reduce spills to less than 10 spills a year on average by 2035.
For more detailed beach investment information see the WaterFit Live beach map.
Your feedback
We are inviting local community and stakeholder groups, to work with us consider where to prioritise our investment from 2025.
The knowledge you hold about your bathing water is invaluable. We know the bathing waters in our region really well, but we also know that so much insight lies with our customers and beach communities.
As we begin refining our investment programme from 2025-2030 we are inviting local community and stakeholder groups, including Parish and Town Councils, to help us prioritise that investment. If you want to get involved please tell us about your beach.
If you are an individual customer and want to have a say in your water company, you can join our quarterly Watershare+ challenge panel meetings. Find out more here.
Download our programme update, plan for healthy rivers and seas, plus the latest bathing water return
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| WaterFit Update - Customer Update 2023 | ||
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| Our plan for healthy rivers and seas - 2022 | Bathing water return 2022 | Storm overflows: EDM Monitoring Annual Report 2022 |
