82 years of sewage spilled in 2024
“82 years of sewage spilled in 2024 alone”
misleading Retired in version 2.0.0, 2 October 2026.
Where it appeared: Home page: headline number.
Why it failed
It was the sum of spill hours across all overflow sites divided by 8,760. That is site-hours, not time: one site can spill for at most 8,784 hours in a leap year, and many overflows spill at once.
Evidence
What the site says now
Shown as total spill hours across sites, with the caveat.