Farmers not the only pollution culprits

I VENTURED down to the county of my birth recently, though admittedly there are parts of Cornwall that have changed so much since I was a boy I might have been forgiven for thinking I had arrived in Miami.

But I was intrigued, while talking to an old acquaintance, to learn that Cornwall Council has now put a total embargo on new building developments in the River Camel special area of conservation because of pollution problems in the waterway – specifically excess amounts of phosphates.

Not specifically a local one, this: a similar ban is in place across Somerset because of pollution problems in the rivers and rhynes on the Levels and in several other parts of the country.

So I asked my acquaintance what the root cause of the problem was. Farming, he said: the blame for all this is being laid at the door of local farmers, who are being painted as the real bad guys at the moment.

Well, I am aware there are a couple of what might be referred to as industrial-scale farms in the area but couldn’t believe that they were making that much difference to their environment.

Anyway, I thought I would pay the river a visit and went into Camelford. I love looking at the river there, mainly because it brings back so many good memories of when I was growing up and used to fish for trout in its waters.

But as I was gazing over the bridge in the rain I noticed a sluice opening on one bank and a stream of filthy water starting to flow out of it. This was the rain that had washed off the nearby road and was importing into the river all the tyre and oil deposits scoured off the Tarmac.

I decided to investigate further and drove off in the Bodmin direction, only to discover a string of locations where the same type of foul run-off was occurring, suggesting to me that farm-related pollution is not the only problem on the Camel.

Eventually I came across a farm where something was being tipped onto a field – that something, upon closer inspection, turning out to be digestate: the polite word for what comes out of a sewage treatment plant. Digestate being the particular issue at the moment because it is a source of polluting phosphates.

I had a word with the chap who was spreading it. Yes, he said, it was all being done under a carefully approved plan in the preparation of which both the water company and the Environment Agency had been involved.

And here’s the crux of the problem. Farmers don’t go spreading digestate willy-nilly. Everything has to be agreed and controlled. Yet now it’s farmers who are being held up as the villains responsible for polluting our rivers.

Two questions arise from the current pollution issue that is affecting so many areas. Given that the blame is being laid partly on increased effluent discharges resulting from the building of new homes, why has the Environment Agency merely sat back on its hands and allowed the situation to evolve until we have reach the point where emergency action is necessary?

And why has the NFU not come to the defence of farmers who are being demonised and pointed out that (a) they are not the sole culprits in this and (b) they have only been doing what the authorities have permitted them to do?

And here’s the crux of the problem. Farmers don’t go spreading digestate willy-nilly