Storm Austen will bring another deluge of human waste, condoms & pads flooding our homes – our kids’ lives are in danger

2 comments 2 Next AS FLOOD water riddled with poo poured into her home, mum-of-three Jenny South watched in despair on her doorbell camera while on holiday. The deluge breached her front door just after midnight, as a family friend frantically messaged her – and the waste kept coming in. 16 Jenny South has seen her village flooded 47 times since moving there in 2019 Credit: Wayne Perry 16 In a horror flood last year, she was left with faeces all over her house after sewage discharged into the river Credit: Supplied Advertisement 16 Jenny and her children had to move out of the house due to the damage Credit: Supplied 16 Jenny is fed up with the village flooding on a regular basis Credit: Wayne Perry And now Jenny is worried that the expected storms could see her house ruined yet again, with experts fearing a tough winter. The Environment Agency has warned approximately 6.3 million homes and businesses in England remain at risk of flooding. Sign up for The Sun newsletter Thank you! Email address Please provide a valid email. Your info will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy You'll now receive top stories, breaking news, and more, straight to your email. Weather event El Nino is expected to intensify wet, windy and stormy weather. And the first storm of winter – Storm Austen – is due to hit tonight , bringing an amber warning for severe wind as well as heavy rainfall. The horrifying sewage deluge, on August 24, 2025, is just one of the 47 times the village of Weston Mill in Plymouth, Devon , has been flooded since 2019. READ MORE IN FEATURES KILLER CLANS I was born into Mafia & trained to kill at 8… my dad was sent to murder me 'GOING TO DIE' I was held hostage after pal invited me round for tea - how I saved myself By the early hours of the morning the village square was plastered with excrement, toilet roll and sewage water – as were most of the houses. Jenny’s home was hit, leaving her and her three children unable to come home after visiting her husband Adam, 43, abroad while he was on a posting in the armed forces. Advertisement Since then she’s been living in fear – along with the owners of 14 other homes in the village – that the nightmare will repeat during heavy rainfall. Jenny, 37, said: “There’s a sewage overflow unit that discharges into our watercourse and it releases sewage on a regular basis, regardless of whether it’s been raining. Most read in The Sun BOELO THE BELT When Storm Boelo will hit UK: Latest Met Office forecast as two storms named STORM TRAGEDY Four killed as Storm Adam rips through France as country braces for more rain TICK TOCK Are the clocks going forward or back this week? PUB 'MURDER' Three men arrested for 'murder' after man, 25, stabbed to death outside pub 16 Jenny has counted that her village has flooded 47 times since 2019 Credit: Wayne Perry 16 The house is near Ham Creek which can burst its banks in heavy rain Credit: Wayne Perry “There was one really bad flood where we had visible toilet roll in the water and the smell, it was just the smell of s**t really.” Advertisement Jenny’s water system in Devon is run by South West Water (SWW) which racked up a whopping 46,164 sewage spills lasting 407,006 hours in 2025. Aside from slurry flooding the streets, Britain’s water companies dumped raw sewage into rivers and seas almost 600,000 times. During the mass flood event last year, two of Jenny’s neighbours’ cars were written off after being submerged in sewage. The family had to wade through excrement just to get to their homes. She says it took 40 hours before the water company agreed to chemically treat the leftover slurry. Weston Mill sits on Ham Brook, and the sewage overflow unit releases directly into the water body allowing it to flow into the village. Advertisement Throughout the ordeal the mother-of-three was terrified for her children’s health and felt “totally helpless”. She says she felt “violated”, especially after seeing the Channel 4 docudrama, Dirty Business, which retold the story of eight-year-old Heather Preen who died of E.coli. 16 Jenny is unhappy with the measures that have been put in place and thinks they won’t work Credit: Supplied 16 The family has been left with black mould since the flooding Credit: Supplied Her parents believed her death was linked to contact with raw sewage on a beach in Devon, although South West Water said no source of the strain of E. coli Heather contracted had been found. Advertisement “I have three boys and my youngest is about to turn three,” Jenny adds. “We all know we will flood again and I know that they will discharge sewage, they’ve got a licence to do it and it boils my blood.” Despite meetings with the water company, environmental agency and council, Jenny has been told there is nothing they can do other than fit flood resilience defences – which Jenny feels is just a “band aid”. But the mum is just one of thousands who’ve suffered at the hands of the water system which experts say have a licence to dump waste across Britain. South West Water told The Sun that they had no evidence their waste water network caused the flood, and said the overflow was operating in line with its permit. Advertisement Julie Blackburn, 58, has seen her three-bed Croydon home blighted by sewage for almost three decades, and back in 2000 she had every parent’s worst nightmare when her youngest son was hospitalised following a sewage deluge into their house. She said: “By the time my youngest son was 6 weeks old it rained and the sewers burst. “There was sewage everywhere, sanitary towels, condoms, and visible excrement on the pavements. It was absolutely disgusting. “By the weekend my little boy was in hospital undergoing a full septic screening and a lumbar puncture. “It was absolutely devastating, I was told not to go into the room because it would be too traumatic to watch, I let them take my baby and put a big needle in his spine.” Advertisement Her son spent three days in hospital and was diagnosed with a viral infection after lots of testing was done. 16 Julie’s house has been flooded and left covered in sewage Credit: Supplied 16 Julie has been campaigning to get more homes flood defences as a result of the damage it causes Credit: Oliver Dixon After years of the street flooding with sewage during heavy rainfall, in 2016, Julie’s home was breached again, as were 119 other houses on the street. “I had to climb through my front window and wade through over three feet of raw sewage onto carpet that was just nine days old. Advertisement “These are memories that never leave you.” Julie had to have dehumidifiers running 24/7 for six weeks in order for the house to be considered “dry” for restoration works to take place which cost £12,500. Thankfully the costs were covered by insurance. Since then she’s set up the Caterham Flood Action group and 162 homes in the area have been equipped with flood defences. But Julie told The Sun it’s only by “the grace of god that it’s stopped raining in time” that her home hasn’t flooded with sewage since. The defences only protect homes during floods under 600mm. So in a repeat of the 2016 slurry flood, in which the street was submerged in 900mm of sewage, the defences wouldn’t stand a chance. Advertisement “Nobody went to look for victims, after six months I found out one local elderly RAF veteran had been a victim. 16 The flooding around Julie is constant and she is fed up with it destroying her house Credit: Oliver Dixon 16 Julie says elderly residents are often left disoriented and upset by the flash floods Credit: SWNS:South West News Service “He’d been boiling the kettle for six months and carrying it upstairs because his boiler had been damaged in the flood and he had no hot water.” Since privatisation in the 80s, water companies have been run for profit not just to provide a service to the public, and customers can’t choose their supplier. Advertisement This means they can get away with very low levels of investment in Britain’s outdated Victorian sewage system while still making a profit. Between 2020 and 2022, Ofwat revealed 14 water companies underspent their budget on investing in their waste system with some spending less than half of the allocated figure. Louis Ramirez, Director of Flooded People UK said: “Sewage leaks are immensely traumatic for people to deal with. “We need the water companies to fix these issues, they are taking huge profits from ever increasing bills but they need to start taking responsibility too.” Surfers Against Sewage have logged 85 per cent of their alerts for waste in designated bathing waters rated “good” or “excellent” by the Environmental Agency – which means thousands of people up and down the country could have been taking a dip in faeces and all sorts of unpleasant flushables. Advertisement Water companies are permitted to leak sewage during heavy rainfall to stop blockages which might cause the waste to back up into people’s homes. 16 The flooding is a constant problem for residents in the area of Croydon Credit: Oliver Dixon 16 Julie’s youngest son fell ill after their first flood in 2000 Credit: Oliver Dixon But figures from Surfers Against Sewage claim that in the first six months of 2026 there were 70,400 hours of sewage discharges on dry days. Not only is it illegal to dump sewage during dry spells, but it also makes the slurry even more toxic because there’s less water in the rivers to dilute bacteria. Advertisement Louise Reddy, Senior Policy Officer at Surfers Against Sewage, believes the pollution is down to a lack of investment in Britain’s water system. She said: “We’re seeing a systemic use of our waterways to deal with sewage. “It’s something we’re seeing on an incredible scale, hundreds of hours of sewage being released into waterways a day. “The water companies are driven entirely to make profit and at the moment, pollution pays. “They’re polluting on a mass scale and making lots of money out of it.” Advertisement A Thames Water spokesperson said: “The Old Coulsdon catchment is recognised as being vulnerable to flooding during periods of heavy rainfall due to its landscape and the volume of surface water entering the drainage system. Effective drainage management is particularly important in this area and requires a multi-agency response. 16 Julie has been left with sewage flooding into her home in bad weather Credit: SWNS:South West News Service 16 Water companies are legally allowed to discharge excess storm water into rivers, which can include sewage, during times of heavy rain Credit: Alamy “We understand the impact flooding can have on local communities and remain committed to investing in our network and working with local partners on long-term solutions that help the catchment better withstand the effects of extreme weather.” They also said they had worked with the local councils to deliver a range of measures to reduce flood risk. Advertisement RECOMMENDED STORIES Richard Price, Managing Director of Wastewater Services at South West Water, said: “We have continued to reduce storm overflow use despite South West England experiencing 62 per cent more rainfall than the rest of England in 2025. Against that backdrop, we have reduced spills by 17 per cent in the last year, and spill duration is down by 25 per cent.” He also told The Sun that they have halved the number of sites that spill sewage more than 100 times a year, and they’ve reduced their top five spilling sites by 50 per cent. They also said they have prevented 8,300 spills through investment and operational