UK Rivers in Poor Health

Citizen testing of rivers in the UK this summer found 75% of them in poor ecological health due to pollution from agricultural runoff and sewage.  Hertfordshire and Cambridge has the worst water quality with 91% and 89% respectively showing unacceptable levels of contamination. Northumberland and Gwent had the least. When the Tories took power in 2010 a quarter of England's were judged to be in good ecological health, by 2022 not a single one is healthy according to an annual report by the Rivers Trust. under British law, driven by EU clean water standards, all rivers are supposed to attain a "good" water quality standard by 2027. That goal was reduced to 75% by Parliament before the election.  Even that goal will be impossible to meet as the recently concluded Paris Olympics demonstrated vividly. France spent more than a billion dollars cleaning the Seine, but the river still contained unhealthy levels of E. coli after a rainstorm making swimming unhealthy. It was a Conservative government under Jonh Majors that privatized the water industry 30 years ago. According to the UK Guardian the industry prioritized shareholder value over public health and the environment. Sounds familiar to US Person, but then he is bad for business.

credit: Evening Standard

The last time full water quality assessments were conducted in 2019, no river met the chemical standards for good health.  High levels of nutrients--primarily nitrates and phosphates-- cause algae blooms and reduce dissolved oxygen and increase bacteria.  These conditions lead to fish and plant death. Citizen testing this summer focused on these two measures since they are commonly found in run-off and untreated sewage. The volunteers collected more than 1300 data sets. With reduced government water quality testing, their effort contribute to a clearer, if not dire state, of Great Britain' rivers. Their data has been passed on to the Environment Agency.

The Thames begins in the southern Cotswolds at Trewsbury Mead near Kemble. Tory country.   The river is fed by limestone aquifers and free running streams of pure water. The river flows 215 miles  to the North Sea--not long by global standards, but of hugely historic and cultural importantance. But by the time it reaches Fairford just four miles from its source it is polluted by sewage discharge into the Coln River, a tributary.  Sewage reaches the river through overflows during heavy rains and crumbling piping due to neglect. 

The increasing amount of sewage discharges caused the Environmental Agency to launch a criminal investigation in 2021, which found widespread and serious non-compliance with water quality regulations. In 2021 Southern Water was fined a record £90 million for dumping untreated sewage into the sea off Kent and Hampshire for six years to avoid upgrades and maintenance on infrastructure. Water companies are allowed to self-report their effluent discharges.  It was the worst environmental crime in the twenty-five history of the Environment Agency.  Currently there is no requirement to remove pathogens like E. coli or microplastics from treated sewage.  The Twickenham water works, the only one to publish volumes, released 3.5bn liters of raw sewage into the Thames in 2020, or the equivalent of 1400 Olympic pools.

So you want more deregulation? Go swim in it.