The Rivers Trust have also teamed up with a number of other organisations, including lead water company United Utilities, to bid for funding for a Catchment Monitoring Co-operative. The partnership was successful in securing £7.1m from OFWAT’s first Water Breakthrough Challenge, to demonstrate how we can build the evidence base we need to transform our rivers.

Rebecca Duncan (30-9-21) ‘The proposal will be delivered through a partnership approach, led by The Rivers Trust and United Utilities, along with more than 20 other partner organisations from the water, eNGO, and academic sectors, formed to revolutionise the way crucial water environment data in England and Wales is gathered and shared, with a particular focus on river catchment health.’

Michelle Waalker, Deputy technical Director at the Rivers Trust “This is a revolutionary new approach to the way we gather and use evidence to drive collective action and make decisions about the water environment. Thousands of trained and resourced citizen scientists and local communities will work with different partners to carry out monitoring and collection of high-density data, complemented by a network of sensors and hi-tech monitoring. This wealth of information will be gathered and shared into a central visualisation platform, helping us all to be part of decisions to invest in the right priorities, to give the biggest improvement to the state of our rivers.”

A 3 year demonstrator project covering 8 catchments.  Click here to read more