How this works.

Data sources

1. Top of the Poops

Top of the Poops provides annual Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) data, already aggregated and cleaned from Environment Agency submissions. We use this for historical/year-to-date leaderboard data. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Source: github.com/top-poop/top-of-the-poops

2. Stream / Water UK Storm Overflow Hub

The real-time data comes from ArcGIS FeatureServer endpoints published by each English water company via streamwaterdata.co.uk. We poll these every 2 minutes, rotating through all 9 companies so each is refreshed roughly every 18 minutes. Each company publishes data in slightly different formats — we maintain per-company normalisers to handle this.

3. postcodes.io + TheyWorkForYou

Postcodes are resolved to parliamentary constituencies using postcodes.io (free, no key required). MP details come from the TheyWorkForYou API.

How hours are calculated

We poll each company's storm overflow data every 2 minutes, rotating through all 9 companies so each is updated roughly every 18 minutes. When an outfall reports a "spilling" status that wasn't spilling at the previous poll, we create a discharge event with the current time as the start. When it stops spilling, we close the event. Duration is computed as the difference between start and end.

Precision: Because each company is polled roughly every 18 minutes, our timing is approximate to within ±18 minutes. A spill that starts and ends between polls may be missed entirely. This means our figures are, if anything, an undercount.

How trends are calculated

The trend arrow compares the same calendar window in the current year against the prior year. For example, "YTD" compares Jan 1 to today this year against Jan 1 to the same date last year. If we don't have data for the prior year period, the trend arrow is hidden rather than showing a meaningless number.

Known limitations

• Timing precision is ±18 minutes per company. Short spills may be missed.
• Some companies report less reliably than others. If a company's endpoint goes offline, we show their last-known data with a "stale" indicator.
• Constituency boundaries use the 2024 parliamentary boundary review. Some outfalls near boundaries may be assigned to the wrong constituency.
• We rely on companies self-reporting their overflow status. If they under-report, we under-count.
• Historical data from Top of the Poops is annual — we cannot show historical time-window breakdowns (24h, 7d, 30d) for past years.
• Company financial data (dividends, CEO pay) is manually maintained from annual reports and may be slightly behind current filings.

Corrections

If you believe any data on this site is incorrect, please contact us at help@touchgrass.now. We take accuracy seriously. We will correct errors promptly and note the correction on this page.

Attribution

Historical data sourced from Top of the Poops, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Real-time data from water company ArcGIS endpoints via streamwaterdata.co.uk.