The Wonders of Water
At The Contented Bear we are extremely lucky to live near Caen Hill Locks, one of the original ‘ Seven Wonders of The Waterways’. Constructed in 1810, their status as a Scheduled Ancient Monument grants them the same level of heritage protection as Stonehenge. Subsequently waders, wildlife and even water itself is safe here, under the watchful gaze and loving attention of the Canal & River Trust.
However we know that not all waterways are this lucky and after watching Dirty Business on Channel 4, it emphasised with searing clarity, the extent of water pollution through the illegal dumping of raw, untreated sewage into British water systems.
Alongside Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP), founded by the extraordinary duo of Cotswolds residents turned sleuths, saviours and activists in Dirty Business, River Action UK is a small campaigning organisation whose mission it is to save our waters from systemic industrial, agricultural and sewage pollution. River Action UK have teamed up with many impassioned advocates for cleaner water including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who appealed to the public to take part in the government Sewage Sludge Consultation.
The consultation was an opportunity for the public to express their concerns about the hazardous practices surrounding spreading forever chemicals onto agricultural land and to change regulations so as to prevent these contamination risks and protect the vital resources of water and soil health for the future. The consultation was an in depth series of 41 questions and River Action helped 530 individuals/businesses including The Contented Bear to respond by submitting a formal response to the consultation.
In June the former head of the Environment Agency (EA), Emma Howard Boyd, contacted the BBC informing them that the EA had been acutely aware that sewage sludge was contaminated with dioxins, furans, microplastics and forever chemicals. She identified that there was no routine testing for them, no legal standards for them and no ‘ministerial appetite to deal with this issue”. In 2017 an EA report revealed that English crops were contaminated at levels that ‘may present a risk to human health’. The BBC has learned that since the Sewage Sludge Commission was proposed, the water industry has been heavily lobbying the government and making hazardous contingency plans of incineration and landfill for the excess toxic sludge - the environmental, health and financial costs of which will be passed onto the British public. Boyd highlighted that for the six years she was Chair all attempts to update regulations were actively blocked by successive governments.
During her time at the EA Boyd saw evidence of additional malpractice by water companies, where waste water treatment plants were used to ‘mask disposal of individual high risk wastestreams not suitable for land spreading’. Boyd is now part of a campaigning group - Fighting Dirty - where the dirty secrets of water companies are exposed and held to account. It has been left to small charities and individual campaigners to fight for clean water, healthy soil and healthy wildlife, waterways and humans but the High Court has ruled that without minsterial action every effort is legally powerless, therefore it is vital that policy makers take action and that we all put them under the critical pressure required to make them do it.
The work continues and there are so many extraordinary ways of connecting with these issues to learn of how they are affecting your local waterways and how to make a difference. Our rivers, lakes and seas’ legendary beauty have inspired poetry that still stops us in our tracks, let it motivate us to stop the polluters in theirs.
www.windrushwasp.org www.riveractionuk.com fightingdirty.org wildjustice.org.uk sas.org.uk (Surfers Against Sewage)
www.sewagemap.co.uk - A map showing where & when raw sewage is being discharged.
The beautiful, clean waters of Caen Hill Locks.