Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘Dead river’ fear prompts action to protect Wye
URGENT action is needed to stop Gloucestershire’s rivers dying from agricultural practices and sewage damage.
National figures suggest that raw sewage was discharged into English rivers more than 55,000 times in 2019 and there are ongoing concerns with local rivers such as the Wye, Coln and Windrush.
One Gloucestershire county councillor said: “The writing is on the wall. The River Wye is dying.”
Now the authority is in the process of setting up a task group to better understand these issues.
The group aims to achieve a greater understanding of the levels of pollution in local rivers and develop a plan of action to tackle the problem over the next six months.
They also want to come up with a roadmap to achieving bathing water status for the county’s rivers.
Gloucestershire county councillor Chris McFarling, who sits on the environment scrutiny committee, said phosphate levels from fertilisers and the sewage discharges in the rivers are a huge problem.
He said urgent action is needed to prevent the county’s rivers from dying.
“I’m on the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty joint advisory council and I’ve made it very clear that if we lose the Wye, the AONB is meaningless.
“A dead river, just a sewage channel, is not my idea of outstanding natural beauty.
“Last year in the summer, we saw those algal blooms. They kill everything, from the invertebrates up.
“How long can you let the bottom of the food chain be completely diluted before the whole of the upper food chain is impacted?”
Gloucestershire County Council’s environment scrutiny committee chairman Dominic Morris said he welcomed the county council taking the issue seriously and setting up the Restoring Our Rivers task group.
“Taking care of Gloucestershire’s natural environment is of vital importance and the council is committed to tackling such issues,” he said.
“This task group will work to better understand and deal with river pollution in Gloucestershire, and I will fully support the group in their work.”
A dead river, just a sewage channel, is not my idea of outstanding natural beauty CLLR CHRIS MCFARLING