The demise of the Kennet makes me sad

THE Dead Kennedys was an old punk band back in the punk era of the late Seventies when the River Kennet was one of the finest rivers in the country.

People travelled from all over the world to fish its hallowed waters and go home with a good catch, record-breaking fish and a few fishy stories.

When you looked over any bridge into the River Kennet, you could not see the river bottom for shoals of fish, beautiful lush weeds and reeds.

All you see now is built up piles of silt, carrier bags, traffic cones and shopping trolleys. Now it is the dead Kennet!

After years of adding millions of gallons of excrement into the river by the UK’s largest water company (unnamed) and the consistent predation by the American signal crayfish on the fish eggs and fry, the life has been sucked out of the river.

Gone are the huge shoals of bream, six pound plus chub, beautiful roach and the famous Kennet barbel.

You may catch the odd mature fish that survived the pollution but mostly all you catch are fish that are just a few years old or feral trout in the Newbury town centre free stretch that the kids can catch on bread.

It doesn’t appear that we have moved on from the Victorian days and the big stink when the Thames and its tributaries where an open sewer system.

It appears that paying out the fat cats and shareholders is much more important than preserving nature.

When will we ever learn that nature is our heritage and our responsibility and we cannot play fast and loose with it?

Every time I look at the Kennet, I feel so sad and at the same time

extremely frustrated with the continuous damage that is has sustained.

IAN SANDERSON Thatcham