UK Tidey owners, you know the drill. We’ve all been increasingly appalled by the state of our waters (rivers and seas) thanks to a crumbling infrastructure and greedy water companies. This has led to increasing incidents of sewage being released into the sea, from all areas around the country.
No one has been working harder to inform the public, and pressure the government and water companies to make the changes deed than Surfers Against Sewage. If you don’t know how they are, go and read about their campaigning here.
Amongst the many things they are doing, one thing that is vital for anyone going in the UKs waters is the Safer Ses and Rivers Service. Its an app that alerts people about recent sewage spills.
Tidey is now displaying this information, an displays when a release has happened in the last 24h within 5 miles of your chosen beach. A simple change of wave colour will happen while the alert is active. The wave colour is also customisable.
In summary: Tidey’s new Pollution Alert feature works with the information published by Surfers Against sewage and highlights if your Tidey’s location has had a sewage spill within a 5 mile radius in the last 24h. This feature currently only works for UK beaches.
There are many factors that you should use to decide if the water is safe to bathe in. Having a sewage alert in place may not mean that the immediate swimmable area is contaminated, as the waste may have been washed out to sea. However, it’s a good indicator to help you use caution and make the relevant decisions about going in. We recommend supporting Surfers Against Sewage who provide the full live data via their app, and who are fighting hard to fix this problem nationwide.
Give it a try: log onto https://cloud.tidey.co and select ‘Pollution Alerts’ from the drop-down in your dashboard. UK only.