In England, only 15% of our rivers are in good ecological condition. While the problem of sewage has been well documented and has quite rightly sparked anger across the country, if we are to clean up our rivers we need to understand there are other pollutants driving down our water quality and damaging the natural environment.
From man-made ‘forever chemicals’ - which are found in everyday products - to nitrate and phosphate-rich waste that runs off agricultural land, pollution can come from more than one place.
Each river in England experiences a different cocktail of pollutants from across the rivers’ catchment. This means that narrow solutions focusing on just one source of pollution will only go so far to clean our waterways.
This is why CEN has regularly advocated for a more catchment-based approach to tackling water pollution. Such an approach would recognise that each river faces different challenges and would bring stakeholders together to develop and deploy distinct solutions to change the course of the river’s fate.
Nowhere is the need for a tailored approach more evident than in the case of the River Wye. This river holds significant ecological, cultural, and agricultural value not just for the community that calls its catchment home, but for England as a whole. The Wye is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, home to a smorgasbord of protected species, from otters and kingfishers to white-clawed crayfish and the Atlantic salmon.
However, the main reason for the decline of the Wye - a river that was downgraded to ‘unfavourable - declining’ condition in 2023 - is not sewage.
It is excess nutrients, particularly phosphates, that are posing the biggest problem to this river’s water quality, of which around 73% have entered the river from agricultural sources. The algal blooms this has triggered, along with the increase in sediment, have caused oxygen levels in the river to drop. As a result, local wildlife populations, including the keystone Atlantic salmon, have crashed.
Unique problems require unique solutions. With this in mind, the previous Conservative government published the River Wye Action Plan along with £35 million of support pledged in April 2023.
To directly combat the river’s biggest pollution source, nine commitments were made to transform manure management, including actions to retain nutrients on land and improve poultry manure management. Critically, this plan was accompanied by the financial means to deliver on its promises.
The Conservatives acknowledged that phosphate pollution from agricultural runoff is the biggest threat to the River Wye and acted on it. But it was by no means the only step that was taken. Successive Conservative governments took unprecedented action to reverse the fortunes of England’s watercourses by tackling a range of different pollutants.
To continue to reverse the fate of our nation’s rivers, this government will need to address all sources of pollution. This will require the government to support farmers to adopt new technologies and use less polluting inputs on their land - a bigger challenge than it needed to be given the fraught relationship between the government and the farming community.
While its Water (Special Measures) Act does include important actions - like blocking bonuses for executives that fail to stop pollution incidents - it does not directly drive down water pollution.
Instead, this government has been scrapping Conservative legacy projects that were created to restore our water ecosystems.
The first is the River Wye Action Plan and the accompanying £35 million of funding. The government has cited a failure to consult the Welsh government, a lack of NGO support, and that the money was not allocated and available to be spent as its reasons for removing the scheme.
While it has promised that a new plan - in conjunction with the Welsh government - is on the way, the timeline for publication has not been set and the fate of the accompanying funding remains to be seen.
That is why it is only right that Jesse Norman MP tabled a 10 Minute Rule Motion that seeks to commit the Environment Secretary to publish and implement a plan for cleaning and improving the water quality of the River Wye.
This is unfortunately not the only project to be canned. The government has also scrapped the Chalk Stream Recovery Pack. England is home to 85% of all chalk streams in the world. Restoring these habitats is, therefore, internationally important, as well as nationally significant.
The removal of this initiative to help restore them has rightly been met with much disappointment from the environmental movement and local councillors who take pride in their protection.
The government also looks set to end the Water Restoration Fund (WRF), a clear conservative environmentalist achievement. This fund ringfences the revenue raised from water company fines and uses that money to fund projects that will restore these ecosystems. It is the polluter pays principle in its purest form.
The WRF was created in April 2023, in partnership with the then-Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt MP, the then-DEFRA minister, Rebecca Pow, following successful campaigning by CEN. Using environmental fines collected between April 2022 and October 2023, £11 million was made available in the first round, to fund projects within the jurisdiction of five water companies.
This round closed in June 2024 with payments due to be sent in July. However, due to the timing of the general election, the payments were delayed. They are yet to be processed by this Labour government.
Efforts by the Shadow Environment Secretary to protect this fund by putting it into law were rejected by the government on the grounds that it was unnecessary. The Water Minister, Emma Hardy MP, also referenced the lack of impact the fund has had, but failed to mention that this is because the money has not yet been paid out to successful applicants to undertake their vital on-the-ground restoration projects.
Combined, it has been hugely disappointing to see the removal of these three water schemes, each providing local communities impacted by water pollution the necessary support to restore these natural ecosystems.
While its recently passed Water (Special Measures) Act will take important steps to hold water companies accountable for their bad behaviour, if it is serious about cleaning up our waterways, the government needs to do more. But, for the moment, it seems Labour would rather play party politics and scrap initiatives than take credible action on river pollution.
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