Tag: Team

We’re thrilled to introduce Drew Richardson, our new Communities Coordinator, who will be joining our growing Communities Team at River Action. In our latest blog, we get to know more about Drew and the role that he will play to help rescue Britain’s rivers.

Q1. Tell us about yourself

Hello, my name’s Drew and I’ve just joined River Action’s Communities Team as a Community Coordinator. I studied Freshwater and Marine Biology at university before starting a career in the charity sector. I’ve worked for environmental charities, set up and managed York’s Volunteer Centre, secured over half a million pounds of investment into our local health and care system, and managed a squadron of Stormtroopers, an Ewok, and R2D2! 

I live in Yorkshire and spend my free time renovating, volunteering, reading, and getting out into nature whenever I can. 

Q2. How did you become interested in river protection?

I’ve always enjoyed wild swimming. Living in mid-Wales for 10 years I was lucky enough to have a local walk with a rarely trod path that allowed me to swim in a section of the Ystwyth between two waterfalls; it felt like my own hidden oasis. This love of the water led to my studying Freshwater and Marine Biology at University where I really started to learn about the dangers to our rivers. Having moved to Yorkshire a few years ago, I’ve become really aware of the lack of clean wild swimming spots and it feels like that escape, that ability to literally immerse myself in nature, has been cut off to me. I want to restore our rivers so everyone can enjoy the benefits that they bring again.

Q3. You have spent your career working in the third sector.  What have you enjoyed most about in this sector and what have been its biggest challenges? 

The thing I enjoy most about working in the charity sector is everyone you work with is passionate about what they do in a way that just isn’t comparable when you’re working for someone’s profits. I spend the majority of my waking life working, so I want to use that time to leave the world in a better state than it was, and work around people with the same ethos. The biggest challenges I’ve seen are the increasing demand on charities, a decrease in funding, and fatigue. We’re so exposed to all the woes of the world, and simply don’t have the capacity to be experts in every cause and fight every battle, so it can be overwhelming. I just try to focus on a few causes I can throw my whole self into, and trust that others will do the same for those fights I can’t champion. 

Q4. You are also a trustee for the Charity, Time to be Out.  Tell us more about the charity and the role you play to support their work.

Time To Be Out supports people who have had to flee from their own country because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We support people throughout every stage of their claim in hopes that they can move on from past trauma and build a life as an openly LGBT+ person for the first time. 

As a Trustee my role on the board is to make sure our charity is compliant with the law, that we use our resources for the most benefit, and that we tactfully navigate the current climate towards those seeking asylum. As a micro-charity with no staff though, I do get stuck in with operational responsibilities too, like checking in on our clients. Whilst we are small, we punch way above our weight, and were even awarded Small Charity of the Year 2023 Finalist at the Third Sector Awards.

Q5. Tell us about your new role as Communities Coordinator at River Action…what can we expect to see from your role in 2024 and beyond?

Initially I’ll be working with community groups to ensure all their voices are brought together in our upcoming March for Clean Water so that their local campaigns are highlighted at a national level. Soon we’ll be launching our River Rescue Kit to support local community groups to have the maximum impact, wherever they are in their journey. So I’m looking forward to helping groups to use that kit and see what exciting things they can achieve with it. As the Communities team has grown, I’m particularly looking forward to meeting and working with groups we might not have met or had much involvement with yet, especially in the north. I’m excited to see what we can achieve together.

Q6. Finally, in your opinion, what is further needed/what needs to change to rescue Britain’s rivers?

It’s such an exciting time to be joining River Action, with many new MPs being elected with local rivers in their manifestos, with rivers being mentioned in the King’s Speech, and river pollution being such a prominent part of the national discourse. It feels like there is a lot of potential for change, we just need to work to make sure that potential is realised. At the moment, water companies and the agriculture industry can get away with polluting our rivers; it’s cheaper and easier for them, so there is no motivation for them to change. We need that to change so polluting is just not worth the risk which means we need empowered regulators that can hold polluters to account effectively and that takes a change from the government. What we need to do is continue to support community groups with their local campaigns, and to collect data as citizen scientists, so we can keep the public informed, keep river health in the public consciousness, and show the government they have a mandate from the people they represent to make impactful change. 

We’re delighted to introduce Henry Shepherd, our new Communities Coordinator, who will be joining Chloe and Erica in our growing Communities Team at River Action. In our latest blog, we get to know more about Henry and the role that he will play to help rescue Britain’s rivers.

Q1. Tell us about yourself

I’m a young, passionate environmentalist and advocate for protecting the natural world upon which my and my generation’s future depends on. I’ve grown up in-and-around nature, and even in my time I have witnessed its dramatic decline. 

I’m desperate to protect and restore what little we have left, especially in the UK – not just because we rely upon it every day, but for its intrinsic value and beauty too. This has spurred my interest in the politics of environmental issues. 

Most likely as a result of my appreciation of the natural world, I am a keen traveller, always looking to visit new places and have new experiences. Apart from that, I enjoy a good country walk, love a bit of reggae, and still can’t beat a kick-about with my mates at the park.

Q2. How did you become interested in river protection?

From the canals in Birmingham where I went to University, to the Loch’s in the Highlands where I was born, I’ve always been around water. Every train journey, country walk, or road trip, we cross paths with our waterways. They are the veins of our environment running across the land. Their prolific pollution has infuriated me ever since I’ve known. How could we allow such short-sighted carelessness to take place, and even worse, allow people to profit from it? 

Turning this frustration and sense of injustice into hope can be hard in a sector in which many feel hopeless. Rivers, however, are a great example of how we really can make a difference. They are woven into so many aspects of our society and economy, uniting a wide range of stakeholders and presenting countless opportunities to play a part in working together towards a solution. 

So, whilst their desperate need for a voice was enough to motivate me, the potential for our rivers to set the standard for what people who care about the planet can achieve together also inspired me.

Q3. Tell us about your new role as Communities Coordinator at River Action…what can we expect to see from your role in 2024?

I am excited to be publishing and delivering the River Rescue Kit website, which aims to empower and encourage people from all walks of life to get involved in addressing the dire state of our rivers. 

As part of this, I will support and work alongside communities and campaigners to ensure that the new government understands that river pollution is an issue that the public cares about, and one that requires immediate and serious action. 

I’m also looking forward to coordinating campaigns at a grassroots level, as part of the Thames Campaign, and I’m keen to establish more community connections in Northern Ireland, North England, and in my homeland, Scotland.

Q4. Finally, in your opinion, what is further needed/what needs to change to rescue Britain’s rivers?

Firstly, for me, it’s an attitudinal shift that is required across certain sectors to one that sees our waterways not as resources to be exploited, but as essential infrastructure underpinning our society, food systems, economy, and our little remaining, wonderful wildlife. 

We also need stricter regulation, enforcement of the law, and increased funding – all across the agricultural sector, water sector, and the Environment Agency. This necessitates that precedents be set and lines be drawn by our government and courts to make it clear that the current state of play is not sustainable, and must, and can, change. 

To achieve this, we have to continue to use our voices to speak up for our rivers and demand that those in positions of power use their privilege to push for this issue to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

We are delighted to welcome Baroness Jenny Jones to River Action’s Advisory Board! In our latest blog, we find out more about Jenny’s life, professional experience, and what drives her to help rescue Britain’s rivers.

Q1. Tell us about yourself

I’m a Green. That influences the way I live and my work, both inside and outside the House of Lords, whether doing media or pottering on my allotment. I also believe in fairness, which is hard to achieve, but necessary for a society that works for all.

I grew up on a working class council estate on the edge of Brighton. Later I became an archaeologist as a mature student and worked for ten years in various countries, mostly in the Middle East.

And then, I became a politician. I won three elections to the London Assembly, I was Deputy Mayor of London 2003, and I’ve also been a local councillor, so I know the importance of representing people and getting things done. 

Q2. What first sparked your interest in river protection?

My experience abroad made me very aware that clean water, along with clean air, are basics for human health and Nature. The London Assembly did lots of work trying to get Thames Water to deal with things like leaking pipes and investing in the future, but my personal focus was on cleaning up London’s air. I worked with professors who described how they didn’t trust DEFRA with anything they did on either pollution in water or air. In the 1980s, they ended up taking their own samples of coastal sea water to provide to the European Commission that our water quality was poor. I found it shocking that our environmental enforcement agencies are so complicit in the poor state of water and air, but all my experiences as a politician reinforced that view. 

In the House of Lords, it became an issue that I would invest a lot of time and energy addressing when the Environment Bill began to make its way through Parliament. Others raised the issue of the pollution of specific rivers, chalk streams and parts of our coastline, and it resonated with my Green principles but also with my concern for human and Nature’s wellbeing.

Once I was involved, in spite of sewage and agricultural run off being such awful issues, I found a wonderful cross section of society joining together to battle with water companies, farms and the Govt. Good people. And often great fun to campaign with.

Q3. You have had many prominent roles in politics, including Deputy Mayor of London, Deputy Chair of the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee, Green Councillor for Southwark Council and Chair of the Green Party of England and Wales. Over the years, what are the biggest changes that you have seen in UK politics over the issue of water quality and what do politicians need to prioritise to clean up our rivers?

The rise of public understanding of the pollution of our waterways in a very short time has been phenomenal. It’s now something that people talk about on the tube! Obviously celebrities really help to get the message across and very visible eg Feargal, Chris Packham. They make it understandable, the problems and the possible solutions.

On cleaning up our rivers, there has to be more Govt support for local groups to access good advice on their specific pollution. There has to be help to farmers, to limit their polluting run off and change practices. But most of all, we must invest in our sewage and water systems. We must fund the regulators properly, give them real power to force changes, and instead of fines, which the companies happily pay, we take shares in the companies. When they fail, as they inevitably will, we can take the bankrupt water companies back into public ownership.

Q4. You were appointed to the House of Lords in November 2013.  Tell us more about your role and the changes that you would like to see happen in politics to improve water quality? 

Explaining my role would take ages!

The Green Party has few platforms, so when I speak in the HoL, I try to speak in clear language so that people outside the Westminster bubble can make sense of our arcane practices. Of course I use the HoL to make a fuss about legislation and its environmental impacts, but also to get Green messages across to the public, who might otherwise not hear our wonderful policies and ideas. People used to ask me why I was speaking in a debate on, say, policing or health, and I had to explain that there is always a green angle, to every topic, that needs to be considered. It might be human rights, or how and where our food is grown, or democratic issues about our unfair voting system. There’s always a green angle …

Q5. And finally, In your opinion, what needs to change to rescue Britain’s rivers?

We have to be tough on all polluters and make them pay for the clean up, not taxpayers. But crucially, not allow pollution in the first place.

The agonising death of the River Wye has unfolded in recent years like a car crash
in slow motion.

This magnificent watercourse, so often voted our country’s most loved river, has in
recent years been assaulted by a deluge of pollution from intensive agriculture,
causing prolonged algal blooms which turn the river each year into a putrid green
soup, snuffing the life out of the river by starving it of oxygen and light.

How could this have happened to a river with some of the highest available
environmental protections, such as its Special Area of Conservation (SAC) status?
One answer can be found in 2018 when Tesco awarded Avara Foods, the Cargill
owned Hereford-based poultry processor, its principal contract to supply chicken
meat. To satisfy our largest food retailer’s insatiable weekly demand for three million
chickens, a spate of planning applications was waived through by local councils to
build dozens of new intensive poultry units (IPUs). The net result today is over 24
million birds being reared at any one time across the Wye river catchment – around
a quarter of the country’s total poultry production.

These huge chicken sheds are today’s equivalent of the infamous Dark Satanic Mills
of Victorian times. Their production cycle starts with hundreds of thousands of tiny
chicks (or pullets) being stuffed with feed imported from Cargill’s intensive soy farms
in deforested Amazonia (therein lies another scandalous tale of environmental
destruction). Within six weeks these force-fed birds (which although fully-grown are
not able to walk due to the speed in which they have been “produced”) are whisked
off to become Tesco special offer drumsticks or some ready meal.

But the worst is yet to come. 

The tens of thousands of tons of excrement in which these wretched creatures
waddle during their short miserable lives is then shovelled out of the sheds and
dumped across the fields of the Wye Valley and elsewhere.  In a short period of time
this industrial-scale manure dumping has caused the land of the river catchment to
become overdosed by several times the level of phosphorous that can ever be
absorbed naturally by what grows there. And each year more gets added.

The extraordinary thing is that we believe doing this is often in breach of the law. The
2018 Farming Rules for Water created a set of protections for watercourses to
prevent agricultural pollution. The most important of these in our view is Regulation
4, which states that it is illegal to apply to the land organic manure or manufactured
fertilisers in a manner that would “exceed the needs of the soil and crop on that
land”. 

If this law to prevent nutrient oversaturation had been properly enforced, then we
argue that the horrendous pollution of the Wye catchment could have largely been
prevented. However, we believe effective lobbying by the National Farmers Union
led to DEFRAinstructing the Environment Agency to turn a blind eye to enforcing this critical
protection. Disappointingly, the EA has slavishly followed the instructions of its
political masters and the tragic consequences are all too plain to see.

Determined to challenge this state of affairs, River Action has spent the last 12
months clawing our way through a tortuous legal process to be able to hold the
Environment Agency and DEFRA to account through a Judicial Review. Finally, we
made to the High Court this week where we faced up to the combined force of the
legal teams of the Environment Agency, DEFRA and the NFU. The latter at the last
minute gate-crashed the legal proceeding to defend the rights of its members to
continue to dispose of manure in a manner, we believe, pollutes rivers.

At the core of our legal case is our view that the EA has acted unlawfully by not
enforcing these regulations. In doing so, we believe it has also failed dismally in its
statutory duty to protect the SAC of the River Wye. 

As the river continues its death spiral (its environmental status was recently
downgraded by Natural England to just one notch up from being pronounced dead),
there remain a few rays of hope. Faced with a huge public outcry, Avara has now
acknowledged its role in polluting the Wye and has pledged that all manure
produced by its supply chain will be exported out of the river catchment. Meanwhile,
a small number of exemplary poultry producers, such as the 625,000-bird Whittern
Farms in Herefordshire, have started recycling their chicken manure into phosphate-
rich pelletised fertiliser. This in turn is sold to arable farms in East Anglia to substitute
imported chemical fertilisers.

However, whilst these individual initiatives must be welcomed, they will not move the
dial if the environmental regulations designed to protect our rivers are not robustly
enforced.

Communities up and down the Wye and along other rivers across the nation will now
be anxiously awaiting the judge’s deliberations on our Judicial Review. Many of
these inspiring river activists were with us this week demonstrating outside the court
in Cardiff as we went in to begin the Judicial Review hearing.

We can but dare to hope that the courts provide our long-suffering rivers with a final
line of defence, given the abject failure of those government agencies whose job it
should have been to protect them.
 
Charles Watson
Chairman and Founder, River Action

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.

You can contact Ian at: ian@riveractionuk.com