The Environment Agency (EA) has been accused of allowing water firms to pollute England’s rivers, the BBC has reported. Whistleblowers said it ignored its duties and failed to stop firms pouring raw sewage into the country’s rivers. The claims feature in the film “SEVERN: the poisoning of Britain’s Amazon”. However, the EA said […]
The BBC reported that the Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey has made a surprise appearance at the Labour Party conference to make a speech on water pollution. The environmental campaigner and Teenage Kicks singer says water companies are “profiteering” while every river in England is polluted, often by the industry itself. The rock band singer highlights […]
A viewpoint from Veronica Edmonds-Brown, Senior Lecturer in Aquatic Ecology, University of Hertfordshire. An extract from a piece first published in The Conversation: As a child swimming off the coast of south Devon in the 1960s, I believed the warm water passing through my legs was the Gulf Stream current. Now, as an adult, I […]
The Border Meuse is the only gravel river in the low countries. As it is a rain-fed river, the discharges can fluctuate greatly: low discharges of 10 m³/s occur during long dry periods, but during an extreme high water, 3,000 m³/s can roar through the Border Meuse. Under such conditions, the river is able to […]
The way rivers function is significantly affected by how much sediment they transport and deposit. River sediment — mostly sand, silt and clay — plays a critical ecological role, as it provides habitat for organisms downstream and in estuaries. It is also important for human life, resupplying nutrients to agricultural soils in floodplains and buffering […]
Testing of rivers in England has fallen dramatically in the past 10 years, with experts warning it leaves a vacuum of knowledge about the effects of pollution. Environment Agency data shows its river testing has fallen from nearly 100,000 samples a year in 2012 to 41,519 in 2021 – the lowest level of sampling in 20 years […]
Chantelle Grundy, Access and Environment Lead at British Canoeing, shares how we can take action to level up access to our blue spaces. A blog from the Wildlife and Countryside Link website. There is a very good reason why we humans are drawn to lakes, rivers, oceans and pools. Water is intrinsic to our very […]
Campaigners for improved water quality in a Suffolk river are planning to submit an application to make it the third in England with bathing water status. Why are they doing it and what would it mean to those who go into the water there? The ‘Save the Deben’ environmental campaign group is behind the bid […]