There can be few more delightfully quintessential British pastimes, than walking the family dog along a canal toll path on a fine summer’s day. Or for that matter, renting a traditional longboat and gliding to a mooring point at a traditional English pub. I was deeply alarmed to discover those once-pristine waters have a chemical cocktail of slurry in them.
However, I hasten to mention this is not an Avery Associates review I dreamed up on the fly. I base what I write here in a report in UK Parliament Committees on 13 January 2022.
They headline their article ‘chemical cocktail of sewage, slurry and plastic polluting English rivers puts public health and nature at risk’. And so this is something that is very, very real, and more immediately serious than dumped household waste on a street corner I fear.
A Chemical Cocktail of Slurry While We Slept
The report by the Environmental Committee reads ‘Poor water quality in English rivers is a result of chronic under investment and multiple failures in monitoring, governance and enforcement.’ And it goes on to report a paltry 14% of English rivers meet the standard for ‘good ecological status’.
However, this is not the result of fly tipping so tragically common in England. That’s because this time the pollution comes from ‘agriculture, sewage, roads and single-use plastics contributing to a dangerous ‘chemical cocktail’ coursing through our waterways’. Offences like these should be prosecuted, but is this happening?
The System Is Badly Letting Us Down (Again)
The Environmental Committee report evokes an eerie feeling that we’ve been here and done this before. It uses words like inadequate, outdated, and underfunded to express the writers’ indignation that breaks clearly through it.
They begin their report with criticism of what they call outdated, underfunded and inadequate monitoring, that makes it difficult to obtain a complete overview. In fact, they make the following alarming claim:
‘Budget cuts to the Environment Agency have hampered the ability to monitor water quality in rivers. And to detect permit breaches or pollution incidents from the water industry and farming. River quality monitoring does not routinely identify micro-plastics, persistent chemical pollutants, or anti-microbial resistant pathogens flowing through rivers.
And moreover the report alleges ‘lack of political’ will is hampering implementation of clauses in the new Environmental Bill that were supposed to improve water quality. Is this a case of water companies and regulators apparently turning a blind eye to antiquated practices of dumping sewage and other pollutants in rivers, they ask?
Is This More of the Same Disinterest
I have written quite extensively of my feeling about fly tipping in England, and the lack of effective law enforcement even in places like Beckenham and Mitcham that should know better. Dumped house clearance waste should be a thing of the past, but there seems to be no end of the practice in England.
Public Health Risks of a Chemical Cocktail of Slurry
The report by the Environmental Committee to Parliament pulls no punches when it describes the impact a chemical cocktail of slurry has on the lives of nearby, innocent people:
- Bacteria found in sewage and animal slurry can cause sickness.
- Yet few river users are able to make informed decisions about it.
- They don’t know when it is safe to use rivers downstream.
- Storm overflows from waste treatment works are a constant threat.
Therefore, the report says the Environment Agency must work closely with water agencies to ensure the public is timeously informed of incidents. The information must be in an easily digestible form they can understand.
And finally, the MP’s call for government ‘to actively encourage the designation of at least one widely used stretch of river for bathing in each water company area by 2025.’ Have things got to a point it will take three years to make even that progress?
History Will Judge Us by the Environment We Left
All these things happened on the baby boomers’ watch. And they are still largely in charge of the ‘green and pleasant place’ they inherited. I can’t see much of the following changing until they hand the baton to their children:
- ‘The build-up of high levels of nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, from sewage and animal waste, is choking rivers. Algal blooms that reduce oxygen levels are suffocating fish, plants and invertebrates.’
- ‘Along with the stresses of plastic waste and synthetic chemical pollution and climate change, this is creating multiple pressures. These undermine the health and resilience of freshwater ecosystems. And as a result of pollution in our rivers, freshwater species such as salmon are at risk.’
I’ll leave the facts on the table right here for you to consider. I didn’t even comment on the long term impact on agriculture. Or what happens when a chemical cocktail of slurry flows into the ocean. If you belong to the generation that will lead us forward, over to you and may you do well.
Read Avery Reviews
Avery Associates supplied an amazing team led by Jeffrey himself, and were highly professional and efficient and moved and cleared the house to several destinations. Their empathy and understanding of the stresses and strains of house moving was outstanding; they even brought the garden up to a high standard for handover. The house was left immaculate. (T Hackett)
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