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How can we help our troubled rivers.  As Paul Whitehouse highlighted in his programs one of the main sources of river pollution are the Combined Sewage Outflows (CSO's) which are designed to direct sewage into our rivers during times of heavy rainfall, when it would be diluted and washed away by the rainwater. Unfortunately the water companies often find it convenient to illegally discharge at other times when the consequences can be dire for life in the river.
just be a surface water drain but we have been concerned about it in the past as it had been discharging in dry weather with a cloudy flow. When an outflow is discharging in dry weather this indicates that it may be illegal sewage or possibly a misconnection (see this blog on misconnections). However this is not foolproof as the outflow below the bridge will probably be a culverted stream, so it is likely to run continuously. However it is worth, whenever you walk over Clog Bridge, to just look over to check the flow from these outlets, if it is cloudy or milky please report it to the Environment Agency and also let us know. For more details on how to do this go to the How you can Help page. According to the Poo Map neither of our CSO's discharges much, although it does say there are technical problems which may mean incidents are under reported, so we need to keep an eye on them.
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Paul was quite hard hitting but did he miss a target. Paul Whitehouse certainly didn’t pull any punches in his programs on river pollution in which he appears to lay the blame at the feet of the water companies, with a supporting role for farmers. However, in a way why would we be believe otherwise? The water companies are run by investment companies who are more interested in profit than in the quality of the water in our rivers. Yorkshire Water, for instance, is owned by the Kelda Group which is in turn owned by:
“Our purpose is simple, to create value inclusive of financial returns on behalf of our investors and portfolio companies.” So we can’t expect the water companies to have the health of our rivers at heart. The only way to make them do the right thing is by regulation. There are two bodies that regulate the water companies:
One of the EA’s main regulatory duties is looking after our rivers. Unfortunately the Government has cut its funding by 56% since 2010 (Independent 29/8/22). Little surprise that the EA finds it increasingly difficult to monitor the quality of our rivers. We understand that in recent years the number of EA staff tasked with investigating pollution incidents on the Aire have dropped from ten to two which, inevitably, means less effective monitoring. That is two inspectors to cover the whole Aire catchment from Malham down to Goole! So it’s possible Paul Whitehouse missed an opportunity to point the finger at another culprit rather than just the Water Companies – the Government. But all is not lost, and in our next blog we will suggest ways in which we can do things locally to make a difference. |
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