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Month: October 2021

Press Release: Spending Review 2021

Posted on by lewis

River Action welcomes Spending Review acknowledgement of need to tackle river pollution; criticises inadequate funding allocated

27.10.21: River Action welcomes the inclusion in today’s Spending Review of ‘tackling nutrient pollution in rivers and streams’ as a highlighted priority for Defra spending over the next three years. However, the group criticises the inadequate scale of funding pledged and the Government’s failure to take this opportunity to address the collapse of environmental protection.

The Spending Review 2021, published today, states that the departmental settlement for Defra includes more than £250 million in public investment over three years to include implementing the Environment Bill, supporting 30-by-30 protected area targets, expanding the Species Recovery Programme and ‘tackling nutrient pollution in rivers and streams’. No further detail is available at this stage as to how that £250 million will be broken down by year or by topic.

Charles Watson, founder and Chair of River Action said: “The fact that every single river in England is polluted beyond legal limits is hugely embarrassing, particularly ahead of the UK’s hosting of a major global environmental conference. It is certainly encouraging that the Government has recognised the level of public outrage around the atrocious state of our rivers and acknowledged that tackling the nutrient pollution in our rivers and streams must be a priority for Defra spending over the next three years. However, our rivers are in crisis and there is absolutely no way that a slice of a total spend of £250 million across three years can deliver anything near sufficient resources to save them.”

“We will be seeking urgent clarification from the department as to how much of this £250 million will be spent on tackling river pollution, how this will be spent, and whether today’s departmental spending uplift will include any increase to the grant allocated for monitoring, enforcement and incident response activities by the Environment Agency, as called for by River Action. The simple truth is that without restored environmental protection budgets all of the flagship nature recovery schemes announced today will be rendered meaningless.”

In June of this year River Action launched a petition calling on the UK and Welsh Governments to double environmental protection budgets to fight river pollution, which has by now received 53,000 signatures demonstrating the strength of public feeling on this issue.

River Action also made a formal submission last month of a representation to the Treasury calling on the UK Government to commit funding to address the river pollution crisis, including doubling its £40m annual grant-in-aid to the Environment Agency for environmental protection activities, to enable effective monitoring and enforcement to support river protection and restoration and safeguard wider government investments in nature recovery. River Action’s representation highlighted that:

  • Every single river in England is now polluted beyond legal limits, with water companies releasing untreated human waste into our waterways on more than 400,000 occasions in 2020 alone.
  • A major contribution to this dramatic deterioration is the complete collapse in environmental protection in this country – Government funding for the Environment Agency, as the body responsible for the protection and enhancement of the environment, has fallen by more than 70% in real terms over the past decade.
  • As a result of the above, river pollution monitoring and enforcement activities have been decimated: each farm in England can currently expect to be inspected just once every 263 years and prosecutions of river polluters have fallen by 88% in the last decade.

 

Amy Slack, Head of Campaigns and Policy at Surfers Against Sewage and River Action Advisory Board member said: “The Environment Agency’s work has been held back for many years by a lack of funds. While the reference in today’s Spending Review to ‘tackling nutrient pollution in rivers and streams’ is a welcome recognition of the severity of this issue, the failure to announce commensurate funding indicates that the Government has still not understood just what a threat inadequate environmental protection poses. Quite simply, with barely any monitoring and enforcement in place, polluters will continue to act with impunity knowing that they are extremely unlikely to ever be caught or prosecuted. Money spent on nature recovery will continue to be undermined, and the cost of pollution will continue to be passed on to society. This is not good enough from a government which claims to be an environmental leader.”

– ENDS –

River Action is a registered UK Charity launched in February 2021 that aims to tackle river pollution resulting from UK food supply chains by placing direct pressure on major agricultural suppliers and producers. The group has formed in response to concerning evidence that reveals the declining state of many of the UK’s rivers, including data from the Environment Agency in 2020 that showed for the first time no river in England met quality tests for pollution.

The group was founded and is chaired by Charles Watson and is guided by an Advisory Board which comprises:

  • Francesca Carnibella, Senior Associate, European Climate Foundation (strategic communications team)
  • Ruth Chambers, leads the Greener UK coalition’s work on the Environment Bill and new Office for Environmental Protection
  • Marina Gibson, Ambassador for Angling Trust, Atlantic Salmon Trust, Fishing for Schools and Orvis Fly Fishing
  • Isabella Gornall, Founder and Managing Director, Seahorse Environmental
  • James Macpherson, former Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Blackrock’s Active Equitybusiness
  • George Monbiot, award-winning writer and journalist
  • John Randall, House of Lords Peer
  • Feargal Sharkey, environmental campaigner
  • Amy Slack, Head of Campaigns & Policy at Surfers Against Sewage
  • James Wallace, Chief Executive, Beaver Trust

Find out more at www.riveractionuk.com

Contact: Amy Hammond, Seahorse Environmental – ahammond@seahorseenvironmental.co.uk

River Action Spending Review Submission 2021

Posted on by lewis

Earlier this year, River Action UK submitted our Spending Review submission – highlighting the crisis in our rivers and the collapse of of UK environmental protection.

We have called on the UK Government to double Environment Agency funding in the Spending Review 2021 to ensure river protection and enable effective monitoring and enforcement.

On the 27th October 2021, the Government will deliver Budget and Spending Reviews to the Commons.

Please support our petition and help us get to 75k signatures to urge the Government to #giveusbackourrivers.

If you would like to read more, please download our full submission.

 

Spending Review Submission – Summary

Our rivers are in crisis:

• Every single river in England is now polluted beyond legal limits by nitrates and phosphates resulting from human, agricultural and industrial waste.

• The UK was ranked last in Europe for bathing water quality in 2020.

• In England, water companies released untreated human waste into our waterways on more than 400,000 occasions in 2020 alone.

• More than 10% of the UK’s freshwater species now face extinction – including iconic species such as the Atlantic salmon – with around 60% in decline.

• This crisis is only becoming more urgent in the face of a climate emergency as the growing challenge of securing supplies of clean water is directly linked to our ability to regulate pollution in our waterways.

A major contributor to this dramatic deterioration is the complete collapse in environmental protection in this country:

• Government funding for the Environment Agency, as the body responsible for the protection and enhancement of the environment, has fallen by more than 70% in real terms over the past decade.

• The Environment Agency’s ‘Environment and Business’ budget which covers activities including agricultural regulations, waste crime and incident response was cut from £117 million in 2010/11 to £40 million in 2020/21.

• As a result:

  • Each farm in England can now expect to be inspected just once every 263 years.
  • Prosecutions of river polluters have fallen by 88% in the last decade.
  • Just 3.6% of pollution complaints to the EA public hotline result in penalties for the polluter.

• Essentially, polluters can currently dump waste into our rivers, placing the cost on the whole of society, secure in the knowledge they will neither be monitored nor prosecuted.

• The EA has has highlighted in correspondence with Government that these cuts are having “real impacts (e.g. on our ability to protect water quality) for which we and the government are now facing mounting criticism”.

River pollution is an immediate crisis and one which has attracted substantial and growing public outcry over the past year or so, both at the national level and through community and citizen science groups which have formed around the country to protect their local rivers

We are therefore calling on the UK Government to commit adequate funding to address the river pollution crisis, including by doubling its 2020/21 grant-in-aid to the Environment Agency to cover its ‘Environment and Business’ activities for the next financial year and into future years, to ensure that river protection and recovery efforts are supported by effective monitoring and enforcement activity.

At a cost of £40 million per year, the doubling of that grant-in-aid is a small investment which would have immediate and tangible impact for our freshwater ecosystems and the people who use them, would be delivered through existing agencies and structures, and would command huge public support (as evidenced by the 50,000 signatures which River Action’s petition on this topic has secured in just three months).

A First Ray of Hope for the Wye?

Posted on by lewis

For the first time, one of the major poultry producers admits to “being part of the problem”

 

On the 27th of September the Wye Nutrient Management Board convened for one of its regular sessions. Created to try and find a common solution to the horrendous phosphate pollution crisis which has  the River Wye in recent years, the Board includes representatives from: the river catchment’s County Councils; the farming community; Natural England, the Environment Agency & Natural Resources Wales; the construction industry; the Wye & Usk Foundation and many of the NGOs across the catchment who have been campaigning to save the river. The latter includes the Radnorshire and Hereford Wildlife Trusts, The Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales and the Friends of the Upper Wye.

These meetings (taking place on Zoom over the last 18 months) have been described by their many critics as talking shops, which tend to go over the same old agenda month in, month out. Indeed, the lack of any progress by the Nutrient Management Board in agreeing any positive way forward has been seen by some as almost scandalous as, with another summer of algal blooms having passed by, the state of the river only deteriorates further.

Then on Monday 27th something potentially significant happened. John Reed, Head of Agriculture at Avara Foods, was asked to address the Board. Avara, a £1.2 billion agri-business, is one of the UK’s leading poultry suppliers and supplies poultry products to all the major UK supermarkets and restaurant chains from its Hereford processing plant (the biggest employer in the county).

Avara has been subject to considerable criticism (including from River Action) for its role in the river pollution crisis. Almost 14 million of the 20 million chickens which are believed to be produced across the Wye river catchment are directly controlled by Avara’s supply chain. Whilst they are reared in sheds which have concrete standings, historically the huge quantities of manure these birds produce (estimated by Avara to be c.150,000 tons per year) get spread across the land of the catchment. Recent work carried out by the University of Lancaster is indicating an unquestionable over-saturation of phosphates in the soils of the Wye Valley – which in turn will inevitably run off into the river. Together with the big free range egg producers such as Noble Foods there is a growing body of evidence that these major poultry producers are the key cause for the pollution crisis facing the river.

However, at the latest Nutrient Management meeting Board Avara openly acknowledged that they were indeed “part of the problem” regarding the pollution of the river – and therefore need to be “part of the solution”. Accordingly, it was announced that the company is currently in the final stages of evaluating a range of major initiatives to remove its chicken manure from the catchment. These included using it as a fuel source for generating renewable energy, incinerating it into ash and biochar that can be easily transported to parts of the country that need phosphate-based fertiliser for arable farming – and treating it via new (not yet public) anaerobic digester-based technology. The company also indicated that it was looking at ways of importing less phosphate into the catchment within its chicken feed in the first place. Avara confirmed that if these initiatives went ahead, then all its chicken manure would be exported out of the valley.

The company was subjected to extensive questioning on the timescale and financial backing for these initiatives.. Here there were no firm answers – with confidentiality agreements and the speed by which planning consents to build the necessary facilities would be granted by the local council – being cited as the cause for this uncertainty. Indeed, many of the NGOs who listened to the presentation expressed considerable scepticism afterwards about the company’s claims due to this lack of detail.

However, if Avara really is genuine regarding these intentions, and if the other major poultry producers are prepared to follow their lead – then we might have just witnessed the first ray of hope of how the pollution crisis of the Wye might be solved. River Action is now engaged directly with the major poultry producers, including Avara, and will be pressing hard for time and investment commitments to be announced as soon as possible. But if what we heard last Monday really is a genuine and deliverable commitment, then it will have our wholehearted support.

If it is not, then we will be returning to the campaign trail against the poultry agri-businesses with vigour, as we will do if the County Councils procrastinate over fast tracking planning permission to build these much-needed facilities.

A YouTube recording of the Nutrient Management Board meeting can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEuzyiK0vBY

The section during which Avara speak is at 0.04.54. This is followed at 0.40.27 by another interesting presentation from Gamber, a logistics company which gives an overview on the task of exporting the chicken waste out of the river catchment.