RAW sewage has spewed into Langstone Harbour for almost seven days over the past month The News can reveal.
The unscreened waste from the citys sewers has left a heavy toll on the protected beauty spot with dangerous plastics sanitary items and even drowned rats littered across the shoreline.
The waste has been pouring from Southern Waters outfall pipe at Fort Cumberland Eastney.
Screens that filter out sewage items are inadequate and the storms over the last month have overwhelmed the filtering system.
The spillages come to a total of 160 hours since December 21 almost seven days-worth of pollution. The Environment Agency is now investigating and the water company could face fines.
Louise MacCallum the environment officer for Langstone Harbour said she had been shocked at what she has seen out on her patrols.
She told The News: Theres been sewage washed up on the shoreline regularly since Christmas.
Its been very unsightly sanitary towels sanitary products and drowned sewer rats.
When you have a beach and its covered in rats I have been shocked.
At the end of the day Langstone Harbour is an internationally-important place for wildlife conservation.
To see this kind of thing happening is really sad.
She added: I want to work with Southern Water to make sure its cleaned up in a timely and effective manner.
Hayling Councillor Andy buyambienfastmed.com Lenaghan had complaints from residents about the filth on the shoreline.
He said: Its unacceptable. Im alarmed by the amount of rubbish waste and syringes that have been washed up.
Three years ago Southern Water was fined 150000 for similar illegal discharges.
The company is currently carrying out work to prevent the leaks from Fort Cumberland and spending 10m on new equipment. But the work is not due to be finished until 2015.
A spokesman for the company said: Our pumping stations and treatment works have been working to capacity during the torrential rain over recent weeks.
However the sheer amount of water falling on already saturated ground has overwhelmed the system.
So to prevent stormwater backing up and causing flooding it has been released to Langstone Harbour as per our Environment Agency permit.
While this emergency measure is standard practice in extreme wet weather we are making major improvements in the area to reduce the risk of emergency releases like this including a 20m scheme to divert rainwater away from some of Portsmouths sewers.
To help minimise the effect of these releases on the harbour we have had a team out during the day removing items like wet wipes which have been washed up and we have teamed up with Havant Borough Councils own beach cleaners to help us do this.
