Pollution alerts are in place at two Welsh beaches after the heatwave. Safer Seas & Rivers Service looks at water quality at over 400 locations around UK rivers and coastlines.
More than 50 seaside beaches have warnings in place across the UK including tourist destinations in Cornwall, Devon, Sussex, Essex, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Cumbria. Both Rest Bay and Storm Bay in Porthcawl also have warnings against them.
For Rest Bay, the warning says storm sewage has been discharged from a sewer overflow in this location in the past 48 hours". The same is true for Sandy Bay.
Read more: Flash flooding hits Wales following heatwave
Heavy rain in the last 48 hours has followed the UK's most recent heatwave, causing sewer overflows which have been eased by emptying into UK waters after they struggled to cope with the high volumes of water placing pressure on drainage systems. Southend-on-Sea and Newquay are particularly badly affected, each with four beaches closed for at least today.
People are sharing images of the sewage being pumped into the sea. Surfers Against Sewage have tweeted to say: "Shockingly unsurprising. It's a horrifying sight on our Safer Seas and Rivers Service app today. What's happening? A rainy day and sewage SPEWS into our waterways. @SouthWestWater @WessexWater @DwrCymru @SouthernWater is that you?"
Hugo Tagholm described it as the "s***storm" saying many south coast beaches are "off limits".
The UK Government's water minister threatened to fine companies last week after it emerged that in addition to sewage releases, billions of gallons of water is being lost in leaks on a daily basis. Steve Double insisted water firms needed to do more to ensure they can withstand future droughts.
"Water companies must continue to invest more, including to prevent leakage and work faster to fix leaks," he told The Mail on Sunday. We are losing somewhere between 15 to 20% annually through leakage, which is not acceptable. Progress has been made but my message to water companies is they need to prioritise customers, not shareholder returns. If we don't see the progress we expect, we won't hesitate to take further action. The public and Government rightly expect more from our water companies.'
Dwr Cymru said: "Heavy rain hit large parts of south Wales yesterday with some areas like Swansea seeing its wettest day since May and some areas experiencing flooding.
"Despite the widespread rain, only two of our combined storm overflows (CSOs) operated at designated bathing waters. This is how they are designed to operate when the wastewater network in an area reaches capacity due to the volume of rainwater in it. The spills were compliant with our permit to operate them and as we always do with these CSOs we sent notifications to Surfers Against Sewage so that they were aware and could notify their members.
"We appreciate that people do have concerns when CSOs operate at bathing waters but they are essential to prevent sewage water from backing up into people’s properties during heavy rain and we are also transparent with interested parties when they do operate."
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