Effluent Entering the River Wear

These two photos show the discharge from what I assume to be Northumberland Water's sewage treatment plant in Barmston into the river Wear, adjacent to the Wildfowl centre in Washington. I sent these and other photos to the Sunderland Echo, but not a peck of interest from that quarter (31-1-11). The environment section of Sunderland Council did show some concern however and contacted the national agency whose responsibility it is to monitor river water. I await their comments with interest.

Edit - I had better get the phrase river water pollution UK in here so that it can be picked up by search engines.

So is this a one off incident? Apparently not, the next time I walked that way the stuff was still pouring out (7-2-11)