Across the UK, ordinary people are taking action to protect our rivers from pollution
I became a river guardian by accident. In the summer of 2020, my beloved local river, the River Wye, which runs from the mountains of mid-Wales to the Severn Estuary, was hit with a colossal algal bloom. The river turned green as algae suffocated life from the waters below. A meeting was organised online, bringing together concerned locals who wanted to do something to help. The Friends of the River Wye was born. We divvied up research tasks and set about taking action.
When we discovered the regulators were only testing a few spots on the river a few times a year, we set up a citizen science project, training locals to test the water quality near them on a weekly basis, to better detect where the pollution was coming from. Hundreds of people are now active custodians of their local waterway, empowered to speak up on behalf of the river.
We’ve raised awareness of agricultural pollution from factory farms and intensive farming methods. For example, we have over 20 million chickens in the Wye catchment area producing more manure than the land can absorb. Perhaps as a result of the noise that we and others have made, the largest poultry producer here, Avara Foods, now claims to be exporting the majority of its manure out of the area.
Across the country, the movement for clean rivers has bubbled up from below. In Oxfordshire, neighbours Peter Hammond and Ashley Smith used to enjoy watching fish swimming in the River Windrush amidst the white-flowering water crowfoot and golden gravels below, so they were dismayed to see the water turn murky grey over a slimy riverbed. The retired professor and the former police detective joined forces, and started researching what was going wrong, exposing illegal sewage discharges on an industrial scale. Their investigations triggered an avalanche of national press, including a Panorama documentary, and they’ve since been celebrated in the compelling Channel 4 drama Dirty Business.
In East London, barrister Paul Powlesland devotes most of his spare time to restoring the River Roding. He’s mobilised an army of volunteers to clear litter from the river, remove the invasive Himalayan Balsam endangering its banks and plant countless trees. He’s also waded through shit to identify illegal sewage outfalls and demand the regulators do their jobs, inspiring a wave of river guardians elsewhere.
These guardians show the power of turning your love for a river into active care. So many of us feel powerless in the face of climate change and nature loss, but we can be part of creating tangible change on our doorstep. In these divided times, rivers are great unifiers because everybody wants clean water and nobody likes pollution. Whilst government and regulators are woefully failing to protect our precious rivers, I’ve drawn huge inspiration from the ever-growing community of river guardians springing up across the country. Like the mightiest rivers, we’re becoming an unstoppable force.