Environmental Actions
Ali's environmental work goes beyond her paintbrush.
She has been a rep for Surfers Against Sewage for many years helping to protect the oceans and the all fascinating life within it.
www.sas.org.uk/region/north-east/
She regularly organises beach cleans, runs creative educational workshops, takes part in campaigns and collects data about the health of local rivers and beaches to lobby those in power to bring about change.
This is just a few of the things she has been involved with -
The Bathing Water Regulations in the UK are failing to protect water users. They must be radically and urgently updated.
This report draws on the efforts of citizen scientists and local communities to highlight fundamental flaws in the way bathing waters in the UK are designated, tested and classified.
What are we testing for?
I have again taken part in the SAS Citizen Science programme were we tested for two types of bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli) and intestinal Enterococci. These are bacteria which are commonly found in the intestines of warm-blooded animals, including humans. As such, they are also commonly found in untreated sewage. These bacteria are also pathogenic to humans – this means that they are harmful and make us ill. Therefore, they are a good parameter to use when measuring the amount of sewage contamination in a water body, and also the risk to human health for people accessing the water. These two types of bacteria are also the same ones that the Environment Agency test for at official bathing waters.
Surfers Against Sewage now have a Data HQ which provides data collected during citizen science water quality campaigns.
This includes the data I recorded during the bathing season 2024 at Seaton Sluice.
Images ©SurfersAgainstSewage
Images from other campaigns I have been involved in organising.
If you would like help or advice to run your own beach clean or find out other ways you can help look after our oceans please get in touch.
Surfers Against Sewage (SAS)2021 water quality report, exposing the sewage pollution destroying Britain’s beaches and rivers has found that water companies are increasing the discharge of harmful amounts of sewage into our seas and rivers, with devastating consequences for the environment and the health of all water-users.
You can read the full story here.
In 2021, for the first time, SAS undertook their our own water quality testing. Investigated water quality at designated Bathing Waters and in rivers at locations where they flowed into the sea, to better understand how
river water quality might be impacting coastal beaches.
As a Northumberland SAS Rep, throughout the 2021 bathing season, I became a trained citizen scientist who carried out regular water quality sampling at Seaton Sluice where the river flow into the sea in close proximity to designated Bathing Waters. Samples were taken using an aseptic testing protocol developed by TH-Environmental with AquaGenX testing kit used to analyse the samples using the Most Probable Number (MPN) method. The AquaGenX MPN Kit simultaneously detects and quantifies Escherichia coli (EC) and Total Coliforms (TC) bacteria in a 100 mL sample.
Images ©SurfersAgainstSewage