Wild swimmers irked by call to take lead on cleaner water
‘We did it because it was the only way to get some attention on Ilkley’
WILD swimmers must take the lead in cleaning up their rivers, a government minister has said, amid a backlash from campaigners.
A second river bathing site in the UK was opened yesterday in Oxford by Rebecca Pow, the environment minister, who called for bids to make more sites into official swimming spots to help tackle river pollution.
The Wharfe at Ilkley and the Thames at Port Meadow, Oxford, are now official bathing sites, meaning the Environment Agency will carry out testing for bacteria during the summer swimming season, part of an existing scheme that covers hundreds of Britain’s beaches.
However, campaigners at the Wharfe bathing site criticised the Government for relying on the public to apply for new bathing waters.
It came as the Government rejected calls to monitor the volume of untreated sewage pouring into rivers from storm overflow outlets, and ministers expressed concerns that stricter “nutrient neutrality” rules to protect rivers from agricultural and sewage pollution might restrict house building.
None of Britain’s rivers are in “good” health, with pollution from sewage combining with agricultural waste to cause problems including contamination from E. coli and high nutrient levels which damage wildlife.
Ms Pow said: “The good thing about these bathing sites, and it will be the same in Ilkley, is the focus will be on them now, and measures will have to be put in place. That’s why I’m so pleased that we are launching another inland bathing site.
“We’re actually saying ‘please come on and put more applications in’, because surprisingly – we write to the local authorities every year, saying ‘have you got any’ – it’s not like we’re not encouraging it, we are, and we get very few applications. So we’re encouraging more.”
Applying for bathing water status involves showing that people swim at that spot, and that there are lavatories and parking or public transport.
The system means the public must prove that people are already swimming in potentially harmful rivers before they get help testing the water for bacteria.
Ilkley Clean River Group, which succeeded in making the Wharfe a designated bathing site in 2020, submitted a 65-page report, including headcounts of swimmers, letters of support, water testing and surveys.
Prof Becky Malby, co-founder of the Ilkley group, said there needed to be more consistent action to prevent pollution going into rivers rather than asking the public to apply for specific spots to be cleaner. “Local councils know where people use rivers, because they put facilities there so why are we having to apply?
“Why is the public having to spend a whole summer traipsing around counting people in order to apply for bathing status?
“We did it because it was the only way to get some attention on Ilkley. It wasn’t because we thought it was the right thing to do. It was because it was the only thing left for us to do,” she said.
Bathing waters are de-designated after five years if the water is consistently poor, something Prof Malby warned was likely to happen in Ilkley if more concerted action was not taken to tackle pollution from sewage.
“Half of the stretch is ‘poor’ and half is a fail. The bit that’s poor, there’s a chance that it might get to ‘good’, but it’s an outside chance.”
Claire Robertson, the Oxford Rivers Project officer at Thames21, who led the campaign to designate Oxford’s bathing water, said that she was “cautiously hopeful”.
“I am concerned that there won’t be enough pressure to actually make Thames Water improve their sewage infrastructure, which our testing has already shown is the main impact on this site,” she said.