Press query

[FelixAJNobes]

Hi all,

We're going to use this data for a story about sewage discharges in west Wales, in particular Dwyfor Meirionnydd and Ceredigion. We've been in communication with Welsh Water, as you can imagine. Its comms people are suggesting we ought to be cautious about using this data as it could be inaccurate.

I wonder, therefore, whether they have contacted you and offered you fully accurate data? Given your figures could be so reputationally damaging to them, you'd think they would have had a rebuttal prepared, no? If they haven't it tells me your data must be fairly accurate, as you've suggested. But I just want to check.

Also, surely for the Welsh discharges you've looked at Welsh Water data as well as NRW data. Or just WW?

Please get back to me as soon as possible. We are publishing early next week.

Please offer comment too should you wish.

Thanks very much.

Regards,

Felix Nobes

[top-poop]

Hi Felix Thanks for getting in touch - Can you drop me a mail at press at top-of-the-poops.org and we can have a chat.

For general information though, and for anyone else that's interested. We gather information from the relevant environment agencies - be it https://environment.data.gov.uk https://lle.gov.wales or https://naturalresourceswales.sharefile.eu - and then parse and clean the data as best we can.

I would definitely give a general disclaimer that this is "best efforts" - we don't guarantee any of the numbers - but at teh same time we spend quite a bit of effort to try to reflect the real situation.

We have had an accuracy statement on the website since we launched "This website is intended to provide an accurate representation of the Environment Agency data. The data is hard to use, and thus some errors may have been made. If you find something that is incorrect, please raise an issue at the GitHub issues page and we'll endeavour to fix it quickly." - no correction has ever been requested.

The links to the datasources are all on the README on the front page of this project. Regrettably, sometimes the links to the actual data sets are time-limited, so sometimes you'll need to navigate to them via some or other route.

[top-poop]

I should point out that "it might be inaccurate" is pretty much lifted from the "Deny, Deceive, Delay" tactic book of climate change denial.

Please note the license for redistributing data from our site (which would include any aggregated or interpreted data or data item) is CC-BY-SA 4.0

None of these notes should be interpreted as being a "comment for publication" - only general public information.

[top-poop]

Hi Felix - Drop us a line at the above address if you'd like to connect.

[FelixAJNobes]

I've sent an email to what I hope is the right address. Please let me know if you received it. Also, what is your background? Do you have data handling experience or qualifications?

[FelixAJNobes]

How long has the website been up in the public domain?

[top-poop]

The first commit to the repository here on GitHub was Oct 28 2021, and the website was launched to the public on Oct 29th 2021.

[FelixAJNobes]

Great. And presumably you can't see the rate of increase or decrease for Welsh Water discharges due to a lack of data?

[top-poop]

Hiya. We only have two years of data. All increases and decreases are on the site, either by constituency, or, near the bottom of the page (count of sewage spills), totals by company- although not increases by company there. If you have other stats that you think useful, please just let us know and we can consider adding them.