Surfers Against Sewage is a UK based organization that’s letting technology keep people safe, clean and healthy around the ocean. Their Safer Seas For Everyone mobile app is a real-time water quality alert system, now covering and reporting from more than 300 beaches through England and Wales. It alerts users of areas with raw sewage discharge and diffuse pollution incidents, then directs them to beaches with better water quality.
Last summer alone the Safer Seas Service issued 212,772 real-time pollution warnings to almost 15,000 users in the UK. The 771 diffuse pollution and 786 sewer overflow events contributed to the more than 6,000 incidents Surfers Against Sewage has been able to reach through their program. A Surfers Against Sewage service announcement claims there are more than 31,000 sewer overflows in the UK. Many of them can be obscured or hidden in carious forms, permitting beach goers to unknowingly come in contact with pollutants even during normal weather patterns. The mobile app itself works by receiving warnings from water companies during overflow of untreated sewage at beaches as well as daily forecasts from the Environmental Agency. It even tracks a particular beach’s pollution history and current condition, allowing users to compare it to previous years. According to a SAS press release there is no other service in the world that provides the same complete and up to date information on water quality.
