On 8/17/20 3:51 PM, johnny hazard via groups.io wrote:
Pay wall? I have always opened the Guardian free before.
That's a surprise. In any case...
The government is looking the other way while Britain's rivers die
before our eyes
George Monbiot
George Monbiot <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/georgemonbiot>
Across the UK, once thriving waterways are being wiped out by farming
and water companies
@GeorgeMonbiot <https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot>
Wed 12 Aug 202002.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 12 Aug 202005.15 EDT
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The River Wye runs through Raglan, Wales, May 2020.
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/12/government-britains-rivers-uk-waterways-farming-water-companies#img-1>‘The
Wye is dying at astonishing, heartbreaking speed.’ The River Wye runs
through Raglan, Wales, May 2020. Photograph: Chris Fairweather/Huw
Evans/Rex/Shutterstock
You can judge the state of a nation by the state of its rivers.
Pollution is the physical expression of corruption. So what should we
conclude about a country whose rivers are systematically
exploited,dumped on
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/water-firms-raw-sewage-england-rivers>and
bled dry?
I’m writing from the Welsh borders, where I’m supposed to be on holiday.
It’s among the most beautiful regions of Britain, but the rivers here
are dying before my eyes. When I last saw it, four years ago, the
Monnow, a lovely tributary of the River Wye, had a mostly clean, stony
bed. Now the bottom is smothered in slime and filamentous algae. In the
back eddies, the rotting weed floats to the surface, carrying the stench
of cow slurry.
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A few days ago, part of another tributary of the Wye, the Llynfi, was
wiped out by apollution surge
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53623857>, for the third time in
five years. Hundreds of trout, grayling and bullheads floated to the
surface, while rare white-clawed crayfish crawled out of the water. In
the Ewyas valley, I discovered, out of sight of any vantage point, that
part of the Honddu, another beautiful little river, is being illegally
quarried for loose stone. Ancient alders and ashes on its banks have
been ripped out to make way for the digger.
The Wye itself is dying at astonishing, heartbreaking speed. When I
canoed it 10 years ago, the stones were clean. Now they are so slimy
that you can scarcely stand up. In hot weather, the entire river stinks
of chicken shit, from the10 million birds
<https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/millions-chickens-wales-turning-river-4260962>being
reared in the catchment. We made the mistake of swimming in it: I almost
gagged when I smelled the water. Thefree-range farms are the worst
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/20/its-like-pea-soup-poultry-farms-turn-wye-into-wildlife-death-trap>:
the birds carpet the fields with their highly reactive dung, which is
then washed into the catchment by rain. Several times a year, algal
blooms now turn the clear river cloudy. The fish gasp for breath.
Aquatic insects suffocate.
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Similar disasters are happening across Britain. In the east of the
country, the main issues are human sewage and water extraction.
Theprivatised water companies
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders>,
granted local monopolies on supply, extract vast dividends and salaries
while not investing enough**in pipes, sewage systems, reservoirs and
pollution control. Instead of stopping leaks or discouraging
overconsumption, they draw down the groundwater that feeds our rivers.
Many now run dry for part of the year. There are only 225 chalk streams
in the world, and 85% are in England. Yet several of these rare and
precious ecosystemscould disappear altogether
<https://www.endsreport.com/article/1527101/driven-abstraction-why-englands-rare-chalk-streams-threat>.
Critics argue that the water companies blatantly abuse the “exceptional
circumstances
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/water-firms-raw-sewage-england-rivers>”
rule, which allows them to discharge raw sewage into our rivers during
extreme storms and floods. Official records show that the companiesdump
untreated
sewage<https://twitter.com/Feargal_Sharkey/status/1283703643309510659>into
many of our rivers and chalk streams for thousands of hours a year.
In the west of Britain, the main issue is livestock farming. As dairy
and poultry units have consolidated, the manure they produce is greater
than the land’s capacity to absorb it. As an agricultural contractor
explained to the Welsh government, some farmers aredeliberately
spreading
muck<https://flyfishing-and-flytying.co.uk/blog/view/welsh_slurry_contractors_say_regulation_is_required_on_spreading/>before
high rainfall, so that it washes off their fields and into the rivers. A
farm adviser told the same inquiry that only 1% of farm slurry stores in
Wales meet the regulations. When the stores inevitably leak, rivers
become sewers. The collapse of sea trout populations in Wales maps
almost precisely on to thedistribution of dairy farms
<https://twitter.com/stuartpengs/status/1251129328034885638>.
A reader in Cumbria writes to tell me that the neighbouring farmer
drives his slurry tank down to the river at night to pump slurry
straight into the water. A rareinvestigation by the Environment Agency
<https://flyfishing-and-flytying.co.uk/blog/view/axe_falls_on_dairy_sector/>found
that 95% of farmers in the catchment of the River Axe in south-west
England have failed to invest in proper slurry containment. As a result,
49% of these farms are polluting the river. The reason the agency’s
internal report gave for this systemic crisis is that the government has
been using a “voluntary approach”. Farms in the south-west have their
slurry stores inspected, on average, once every 200 years. Why upgrade
your store if there’s little chance of getting caught?
What we are seeing across Britain is complete regulatory collapse. Even
after the extreme and sudden pollution of the Llynfi, the “emergency”
team at Natural Resources Wales failed to arrive for 13 hours, and
refused to accept a water sample taken by a local person at the peak of
the incident. In the Wye catchment, Powys county council is licensing
new chicken farmsbehind closed doors
<https://m.facebook.com/notes/river-wye-pollution-and-conservation/cprw-brecon-radnor-branch-press-release-2nd-july-2020/2633300743624910/>.
In England, the Environment Agency turns a blind eye: of 76,000
pollution and fly-tipping cases reported last year, just one resultedin
a fixed penalty notice
<https://www.endsreport.com/article/1689948/eas-incident-reporting-system-falls-shockingly-short>.
Yes, one. As the ENDS Report documents, the agency’s own officers see
its monitoring methods ascompletely useless
<https://www.endsreport.com/article/1673511/ea-insiders-slam-agencys-completely-useless-water-monitoring-regime>.
In 2016, the government revealed that only 14% of England’s rivers are
in good ecological condition. But instead of taking action, the
government has followed Donald Trump’scoronavirus policy:
<https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing-slow-down-response/index.html>if
you want the issue to go away, test less. After 2016, it ceased annual
monitoring and reporting. It told us to expect the next report in 2019.
Then it said spring 2020. Now it saysautumn 2020
<https://www.endsreport.com/article/1689729/exclusive-crucial-river-water-quality-report-delayed-again>.
Perhaps it means never.
The economic power of the water companies and the cultural power of the
farmers both translate into political power. Special interests rule. The
public and the living world come last. Peer into your local river, and
you’ll see the political filth flow past.
•George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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