All English Rivers - Nothing New

[Barbelbonce]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59955624

You will all have heard or read this in the last 24 hrs, no doubt.

The Wye chicken farm pollutions have been widely and loudly covered in the last 12+ months. There is nothing new about farm pollutions of our watercourses, regrettably. I am slightly shocked that we have NO clean rivers in England, though.
ALL the "forever culprits" are at it all the time and I'm afraid that farmers always get an easy ride from the EA. Slurry tank/pit leaks and slurry spraying right on the banks of rivers, ponds and lakes are symptomatic of the wish to grow maize on unsuitable clay ground so that dairy herds can be kept and fed in barns. Much easier than grass-feeding! It will surely not be long before giant feedlots become the norm in England. However, it is good to read that some applications for massive cattle/milk production facilities (won't call them "farms") have been refused.
The water companies also get away with everything. Only Fish Legal act against them, the EA having given up what they consider to be the unequal struggle.
I will not ramble on about all the other threats and damage to our rivers. This is covered in other threads here and I would be in danger of transgressing Mark's "no politics" rule! It is all mightily depressing.
It is a bad and sad day when your club have to give up a favourite lake because the results of slurry spraying make it impossible to manage the water and members no longer want to fish it.
Mike

[Stathamender]

You can find the report and summary here: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/c ... eport.html. There was also an extended discussion on BBC Breakfast this morning starting at 8.51 if you want to access it via I-Player. Yer Man Feargal was especially effective, it's very much worth waiting for his contribution after the 9 am 'station break'. Nails hit on head.

If you want to follow Feargal's advice I refer you to Mark's earlier post on the matter of raw sewage releases viewtopic.php?p=466718#p466718. I agree that it is well worth a few minutes of your time to do the same in this case. You can find the necessary details here: https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/ ... t-your-mp/.

[EricW]

I saw the Thames water rep on the news saying that they know their discharges are unacceptable but that it would take time to fix. They and their predecessors have been saying this since I was at school, so that's fifty plus years so far. No wonder they discharge so much because they are full of it. Every year for as long as I can remember they release stories to the media about how many species there are in the Thames and every time some poor old salmon strays into the river we get the story about how they are coming back and all because the water quality is so good. Like I say they are full of **it.

[OldRod]

Reasonable timescales for improvement should be set.
If the set standards are breached, the CEO of the responsible body should GO TO JAIL.
Until this happens nothing will change; they will pay the fines and pass on the costs to the long suffering public, whilst still paying fat bonuses executives and dividends to shareholders.
Same principle should apply to Railways, Banking etc.
p.s. I am no leftie - just p***** off with these people taking the p***!

[Ian.R.McDonald]

Surely all of the Water Companies are hitting their #1 target? Making the maximum cash for their shareholders

Until the people controlling water have their first priority as making water clean and safe at all points- things will not change