Responding to the announcement that following an investigation by the Environment Agency Yorkshire Water has paid £1 million to environmental and wildlife charities after polluting a watercourse, CEO of River Action James Wallace said, “We welcome the investigation undertaken by the Environment Agency which has found Yorkshire Water polluted a Harrogate watercourse causing 1,500 fish to die in 2017.
“Environmental laws state that the polluter must pay. However, in this case the £1 million to be paid to two environmental charities – the local Wildlife Trust and Rivers Trust – to carry out environmental improvements is both voluntary and so insignificant it will be a mere dent in the water company’s balance sheet.
“Water companies see paying fines for polluting rivers as a calculated business risk. The Environment Agency is meant to be a powerful regulator, monitoring pollution and enforcing the law. How can it take seven months let alone seven years to punish a polluter so obviously guilty? And why wasn’t the penalty enforced through legal action rather than left to be optional? These are yet more demonstrations of the Environment Agency being unfit to be a regulator of our precious water resources.
“Funding to NGOs helps with natural solutions like restoring wetlands and wildlife is helpful but the Environment Agency should be tackling the source of the problem: the lack of investment in water company sewage infrastructure over decades.
“The Environment Agency and its sibling water industry regulator, Ofwat, must be properly financed, structurally reviewed and modernised. They just don’t have the resources in place to prosecute polluters with existing environmental law, nor, in the case of Ofwat, do they stand up for the consumer and demand the water companies fix their leaky infrastructure.
“Each individual water company – including Yorkshire Water – needs to have their structures, financing and business plans reviewed to make sure they are fit to service a growing pollution and to cope with the pressures of increasing floods and droughts caused by climate change.”
ENDS
For enquiries, comment or further information, please contact:
Ian Woolverton, Senior PR Coordinator: 07377 547 362; ian@riveractionuk.com
NOTE TO EDITORS
River Action is a registered charity founded in 2021 by its chairman Charles Watson to campaign for cleaner rivers across the UK. It has subsequently grown rapidly into one of the country’s leading environmental freshwater campaign groups. It has a mission to rescue Britain’s rivers from a toxic cocktail of agricultural, sewage and chemical pollution, as well as other threats such as excessive water abstraction.
With the active support of many leading figures of the UK environment movement through its advisory board, River Action’s campaigning is based around empowering communities to protect and restore their rivers; mobilising public opinion to influence policy and enforce river protection; as well as advocating for urgent government policy and changes in industry practice.
River Action has written to the newly appointed Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs seeking urgent clarification on when DEFRA will publish its promised emergency plan to save the River Wye from ecological collapse.
Minister Steve Barclay’s predecessor, Thérèse Coffey, undertook to publish an action plan by the end autumn this year. But with days to go before the start of winter, there are growing concerns that the plan will fail to materialise, leaving the Wye facing an existential crisis with no effective mitigation strategy in place.
Founder and Chairman of River Action UK Charles Watson says, “We have written to Steve Barclay, our seventh Environment Minister in seven years, seeking urgent clarification of the whereabouts of the Government’s plan to act regarding the ecological collapse of the River Wye.
“His predecessor promised the plan by autumn this year, meaning Mr Barclay has just two weeks to make good this commitment. It would be appalling if such a critically important environmental policy action was to disappear between the cracks of DEFRA’s never-ending game of musical chairs.
“DEFRA must act now. With Natural England now having recently downgraded the environmental status of the river to “unfavourable-declining”, the situation on the Wye has reached a state of emergency, with little time left to save the river from comprehensive ecological collapse.”
Intensive poultry industry a major cause of the Wye crisis
Industrialised chicken production throughout the Wye region has now been established as one of the principal causes of the severe pollution of the river. Urgent and immediate action is now needed to end the destructive application of chicken manure across the soils of the river catchment, from where it constantly leaches into the watercourse.
Mr Watson says, “The soils of the Wye are now significantly oversaturated with phosphorus, a prime source of which originates from the continual spreading of the manure originating from the 25 million chickens that are intensively reared across the catchment. The run off of these nutrients, often exacerbated by unsustainable agricultural practices such as winter maize cropping, is the prime cause of the devastating algal blooms that are now witnessed along the length of the river system during the summer months.
“This severe ecological collapse of the iconic River Wye is one of the great environmental scandals of our times.
“The sickening and avoidable tragedy is that this situation could have been seriously mitigated had the Environment Agency properly enforced existing environmental regulations to prevent the excess application of animal waste on land that was already oversaturated with nutrients.”
High Court legal challenge against the Environment Agency
On 28th February 2024, River Action’s Judicial Review hearing will be heard in the High Court in Cardiff, where it will claim that both The Environment Agency and DEFRA have acted unlawfully in failing to adequately protect the River Wye from agricultural pollution.
Last week we saw River Action’s CEO, James Wallace, join Chris Packham live on 8 Out of 10 Bats to discuss the horrific state of our rivers and what we can do to help save them.
A huge thanks to Chris Packham, Megan McCubbin and the team at #8outof10bats for inviting us along. If you would like to view the whole episode, you can catch it here.
Responding to the King’s Speech, CEO of River Action James Wallace said, “After numerous briefings that the Government were planning to press ahead with ditching river protections, we welcome the absence of a return to the ridiculous idea that we can’t have home building and healthy rivers.
“However, what we have seen today is further evidence that this Government is hardly a trailblazer for nature and the environment. Backing the expansion of North Sea oil and gas exploration is an embarrassing backward step for our nation in the middle of a climate and nature emergency.
“Yet how hypocritical that the Government says it will continue to lead action on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss by support developing countries with their energy of transition; and holding other countries to their environmental commitments. What about here at home?
“Where’s the detail on the Environment Land Management Scheme which post Brexit promised to help farmers look after the land and rivers? Where are the commitments to make water companies stop illegal discharges of sewage, and fix their leaking pipes?
“Meanwhile, the environmental regulators, the Environment Agency and Ofwat are toothless and starved of funds, unable to carry out wide-scale inspections or to prosecute polluters.
“The Government is today signalling that it would rather back polluting industries than look after our environment. Healthy rivers and secure supplies of drinking water and food are not optional. They are the foundation of our economy and society.”
River Action call for Thames Water to wake up to climate change and fix its creaking infrastructure, after water treatment failure in Surrey leaves customers needing bottled water
Responding to the major incident declared by Thames Water following the Shalford wastewater treatment works failed on Saturday 4th Nov, CEO of River Action James Wallace says, “By its own admission, Thames Water has been forced to distribute nearly 500,000 litres of bottled water to support thousands of customers. It is a disgrace that a UK water company must resort to handing out even one bottle of water. This is not Haiti, this is one of the wealthiest parts of the UK.
“To blame Storm Ciaran is unacceptable. We are witnessing the water industry’s systemic lack of investment in its infrastructure and services. It can’t cope with climate breakdown, despite decades of warning to mitigate the impacts of weather-related events, forecast to get more severe.
“This water treatment failure is a consequence of decades of underinvestment by Thames Water. At the same time the company has handed out dividends to its shareholder and loaded the company with $14bn in debt. It is a failure of water quality. It is a failure of water security.
“Thames Water leaks 600 million litres of drinking water per day. It has opened no new reservoirs in decades. When will Thames Water stand up and be accountable, and invest in their infrastructure to fix leaky pipes, to reduce abstraction, to upgrade sewage systems?
Figures show that 661 hours of sewage discharge has occurred on the River Wey at Guildford and upstream of the Shalford wastewater treatment works since 1st November. Mr Wallace says, “This is a predictable and avoidable risk to people’s health and to wildlife.
“Thames Water must stop making excuses and come clean about its lack of investment, and the regulators, the Environment Agency and Ofwat, must too. Thames Water provide an essential service, like a health service coping with a pandemic. It must be climate shock proof. That means it must perform well during both storms and droughts.”
A cocktail of pollutants will freely enter the UK’s rivers because of Storm Ciarán, heaping more misery on our ecologically degraded rivers, warns River Action.
In response to the nationwide river emergency, River Action is calling for more investment in environment regulators to clamp down on river polluters.
CEO of River Action James Wallace says that the last decade and a half has seen a systemic collapse in environmental protection with regulatory agencies defunded and regulations designed to protect rivers from pollution deliberately not enforced.
“The government has cut 70% of the environmental protection budgets of the Environmental Agency over the last decade and a half. This has allowed the water companies and intensive agriculture sector, supplying large supermarket chains, to pollute with impunity for profit over the environment.
“It is critical that the Government enforces the existing regulations that are in place to mitigate heavy rain polluting our rivers. This is now more urgent than ever because of climate change leading to more extreme weather events.”
Mr Wallace adds, “There is an understandable focus on protecting lives and property at risk from storms such as Ciarán. However, these increasingly frequent extreme situations will also place huge environmental stress on our fragile river ecosystems, given the huge volumes of sewage discharge and agricultural run-off that will ensue.”
Charters for Rivers – restoring the health of the UK’s rivers by 2023 River Action’s Charter for Rivers sets out what political parties must do now to restore our rivers to health by 2030. Learn about the Charter here.
For interviews call Ian Woolverton on 07377 547 362
We are thrilled to welcome Ian Woolverton as our Senior Media Coordinator at River Action! In our latest blog, we get to know more about Ian and the role that he will play to help rescue Britain’s rivers.
Tell us about yourself?
I grew up poor in the seventies and eighties in the Midlands. It was a time of racial tension, mass unemployment, the miner’s strikes and so on. But it was also a time of great social change, Ska music, black players, for the first time, in the local football teams, West Bromwich Albion especially (for the record, I am a life-long Wolves supporter!). Despite the poverty, I loved Wolverhampton. I had mates from all sorts of backgrounds – Hindus, Sikhs. It was ace.
My nan, who helped raise me and worked as a cleaner at the Wolverhampton branch of the NatWest set something off in me about social justice, fighting for fairness and a more progressive society.
It was an insalubrious childhood, but I am indebted to my wonderful grandmother who put me on the right path; we’d sit in her kitchen, watching the evening news discussing how the world could be fairer, kinder. Our conversation would often centre on politics, fighting injustice, look out for the vulnerable. Then we’d giggle at Blankety Blank and Are you Being Served?
My nan was a wise, kind, and loving woman. She had the single most important influence on me growing up.
I was a terrible student. Always gazing wistfully out of the window. I liked English but I drifted; that is until I was asked at college to write a piece of journalism about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I loved writing it, but my German teacher convinced herself it was plagiarism. She scoured newspapers for the article I had allegedly pinched! That was the light bulb moment for me, writing, journalism.
I pursued it and as a result I have carved out a terrific career in media relations for social justice causes. I started at Shelter in the nineties, where some of my mates from that time are now MPs.
Then, almost on a whim, I emigrated to Australia and kicked off a 22-year career in the humanitarian sector. This led to me covering most of the major crises of the last two decades; from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to the genocide in Darfur, the violence perpetrated against the Rohingya people and much, much more beside. For two decades I travelled the world with my work. It was an incredible privilege, and I met many fantastic people from a plethora of cultures and communities. I loved it. The lad from Wolves seeing the world!
I’ve always enjoyed writing, but my first love is photography. You can view my work here.
What first sparked your interest in river protection?
As a child raised in urban poverty in the Black Country, finding nature was revolutionary in my life.
Today, as a keen nature lover living on the edge of the Lake District National Park, I have witnessed the appalling damage done to places like Lake Windermere, now contaminated with human poo, agricultural pesticides, and fertilisers.
If we allow the wilful destruction of England’s most famous lake, what hope for our rivers? As the climate crisis becomes more urgent, more present in our lives, it demands that we protect our rivers; and the species and fragile eco-systems that rely on them for existence. Covid has reminded us just how important access to green space and nature is; more than ever River Action represents our needs and our rights in this regard, facilitating our relationship with and sense of belonging to the landscapes and rivers of Britain.
You have over 20 years of experience leading media comms in the humanitarian sector – including for NGOs, Red Cross, and WHO. What have been the biggest challenges that you have faced in these roles and what have been your biggest achievements thus far?
It is an exhilarating sector to work in with so much going on all the time. I would say that the biggest challenges come from working cross-culturally but that also comes with massive reward too. You are never ‘off the clock’, so it can be exhausting. There is always a humanitarian story breaking somewhere in the world.
Mentally it is very taxing work. I was dealing with a lot of death and destruction. It takes a toll seeing, over and over, just how horrible humankind can be to itself. Then again, you get to see the very best of people in extremely challenging environments; you end up realising that compassion and kindness outweigh the cruelty. I look back on the career I had in the humanitarian sector and sometimes I’m amazed I managed to do it for so long.
Don’t get wrong me, it was a humbling experience to have witnessed many of the most devastating humanitarian crises of the last two decades. I got to report on them, work with the world’s media, draw attention to terrible humanitarian suffering; and hopefully do it in a way that empowered people whose story I was helping to tell.
I did witness lots of horrible stuff too, so you need to manage your mental health very well in that world.
A personal high point for me was the award of the Australian Government’s Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal. It is an official award in the Australia’s honours system. Handing that medal over to my nan and seeing her beam; golden cherished moment.
Tell us about your role as River Action’s Senior Media Coordinator. What can we expect to see from your role in the coming months?
In terms of my role with River Action. Blimey, where do I start? I have joined at a very exciting time. It’s only mid-February and already we’ve generated hundreds and
hundreds of high-profile media stories this year so far. Suddenly, at least it seems to me, the nation is alive to the risk pollution poses to our rivers.
The nation is rightly angry and wants more done to protect them. We’ve got a bunch of exciting campaigns up this year, and I hope to play my part by working with the media to fight for the health of the nation’s rivers.
I am particularly interested in how we can broaden our reach and involve people from less privileged backgrounds, or under-represented backgrounds; people like me who grew up in places that are not top of mind for rivers. How do we reach out to people on council estates, perhaps living in high rise towers? They have just as much as right to benefit from a healthy river as someone who is fortunate to live nearby one.
And finally, In your opinion, what needs to change in order to rescue Britain’s rivers?
That is easy. The enforcement of existing environmental laws designed to protect to our rivers. We’ve got some great laws in this country that, if enforced, would do a lot of good for our rivers; and send a powerful message to polluters that we are coming for you.
Remember, 2024 is most likely a general election year. Therefore, if you care about river health, help us hold the water companies and industrial-scale agricultural polluters accountable; as well as kicking the regulators – Ofwat, DEFRA the Environment Agency – up the jacksie to demand they do the job they are paid to do; enforce the law to protect our rivers.
