Terms of use

How's the Water is a free site run by Chris Chrisostomou. By using it, its RSS feeds or its API, you agree to these terms.

What the site is

The site reports what public monitors say about storm overflows, river levels, rainfall, flood warnings and bathing water samples. It is not a safety service and is not advice. Read what this site does not do before relying on it.

Make your own judgement at the water, follow local signs and official advice, and in an emergency call 999.

The data

Data comes from the Environment Agency, SEPA (the Scottish Environment Protection Agency), the water companies and Ordnance Survey. It is near real-time and unvalidated, and it can be late, missing or wrong. Neither the data nor the site comes with any guarantee of accuracy or availability, and the site may change or stop at any time.

The Environment Agency, SEPA and the water companies do not endorse this site, and nothing here should suggest they do.

Reusing the data

You can reuse the underlying data under its original licence, crediting the source as that licence asks:

• -Environment Agency flood, river level, rainfall and bathing water data: Open Government Licence v3.0.
• -SEPA river level and rainfall data: Open Government Licence v3.0, crediting SEPA as the owner of the data.
• -Storm overflow data published by the water companies through Stream: CC BY 4.0.
• -Storm overflow data from Scottish Water: published by Scottish Water for reuse, crediting Scottish Water as the source.
• -River centrelines from OS Open Rivers: Open Government Licence v3.0, contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right.
• -Map tiles: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.

The Environment Agency asks that data is not used for safety-critical purposes, and that applies to anything you build with it too.

Fair use

Search, the RSS feeds and the API are rate limited per IP address. Please do not scrape the site heavily or try to get around the limits. Access can be blocked for clients that harm the service for others. If you want a copy of the data, get in touch and we can sort something out.

Liability

As far as the law allows, no liability is accepted for any loss or harm arising from use of the site or its data. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

General

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. They may be updated, and the date at the top will change when they are. How personal data is handled is covered by the privacy notice.