Recently I was asked to add my name to a campaign about reducing sewage pouring into our rivers during a storm. Rather than taking my usual approach of clicking a few buttons and sending a prepared email to my MP, I decided to read all of the material that I had been sent. What I unearthed was the complexity of the underlying problems and therefore the likelihood of the campaign’s success.
There is nothing better than walking along a river, whatever size, trying to spot the movement of a fish and once sighted, watching it feed. It can absorb many enjoyable hours. But it is becoming harder to see any fish movement because of the poor state of the rivers. After heavy rain I have seen sewage flowing through my favourite brooks and I hate to think of the pollution that can’t be seen from small particles of rubber being washed from the roads.
When I was contacted by The Angling Trust asking for my support with their campaign; I signed up. Their main concern was that the government’s proposals will take too long to clean the water in our rivers. The targets aim to reduce spills at “high priority sites” – by which they mean Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Conservation, eutrophic sensitive areas i.e. found to contain excessive levels of nutrient waste, chalk streams and waters currently failing our ecological standards due to storm overflows – and bathing water sites. Only after that will water companies be required to tackle the remaining storm overflows. But the target dates they have set are 2035 to achieve 75%+ of the high priority sites and achieve the targets for all remaining storm overflow sites by 2050. Therefore, it is going to take nearly 28 years before all of the rivers are free of the damage caused by storm overflows.
There were a range of issues that The Angling Trust wanted addressing: a broader scope of the plan that addresses the root causes of the problem, targets for government action with more detail on how different government departments will implement the plan in an integrated way and much greater ambition and urgency in the targets set for water companies, and a higher and more immediate action to reduce harm by 2030. In summary The Angling Trust’s view, and mine, was that the government’s plans were too little and too late!
The information that I had been sent was from The Angling Trusts’s perspective and is one that I agree with. However, I felt that it was important to get the government’s view. Digging further into the various links that I had been sent I came across the Consultation on the Government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan which describes a number of issues including the age of the sewage system and how it operates during a heavy storm. For example, during a heavy storm the excess water is combined with the sewage system to manage the overload. With the increase in storms due to the Climate Crisis then the problem is going to get worse. In amongst the documentation were various estimates to completely separate the sewage from storm overflows which would cost between £350 billion to £600 billion and would cause significant disruption. Most of the combined system runs under our towns and cities and would have to be dug up. Reducing discharges to zero in an average year at all inland waters using other options, such as building storage tanks to capture excess water during heavy rainfall, would cost between £160bn and £240bn. Reading between the lines the government is trying to find a balance between reducing, and eventually stopping, storm overflows and the price that we as consumers pay for water and sewage.
However, there were a number of elements missing in the documents. First, it wasn’t clear how the storm overflow reduction would be integrated into an overall pollution programme such as the reduction of pollution from other sources such as agriculture and industry. Secondly, there were no initiatives being sponsored to look at innovative solutions to the problem. For example, developing ideas such as Connected Stormwater Management with Smart Water Butts which uses water butts installed at customer’s houses. They are monitored and controlled to manage the flow of storm water. Finally, there were no initiatives to promote local communities to both monitor and manage their own parts of the rivers such as at Chalgrove Brook in Oxfordshire which brings together local conservation groups, schools, landowners and artists to recover the ecology of their local brook.
I took the standard letter and modified it to add in my thoughts, which I have outlined above, and sent it to my MP. I am still waiting for a reply. I am not hopeful that the government’s targets will be met because of the approach that they are taking. If we are going to save our rivers from pollution and return them to a pre-industrial state then we need: local communities, water companies, landowners, local and national government, consumers, and environmentalists to work together within an ambitious framework.