On 17 March we covered a report by the Senedd’s Climate Change Committee which was calling on the Welsh Government to take urgent action to tackle sewage discharges made by water companies into Welsh rivers. There was a report of over 105,000 incidents of untreated sewage being dumped into Welsh rivers. Further information on this story can be found here and the full report is here.

The BBC has now published a piece on its website, entitled ‘River Wye: Concerns over pollution in Wales’ rivers’, which delves further into the concerns around the condition of rivers in Wales. The report concentrates on the 155 mile-long River Wye, which weaves in and out of Wales and England and in some parts acts as the border between the two countries. Natural Resources Wales is in charge of regulating Welsh waterways, while the Environment Agency does so for England.

The BBC piece states that Environment Agency modelling suggests the sources of pollution in the Wye come predominantly from agriculture (64%) and sewage (28%).

River Action and other campaign groups link the ecological damage to run-off from major intensive poultry farms. They believe high phosphate levels from excrement causes algae to bloom and choke out other plants and animals. Salmon and Trout Conservation have joined Fish Legal, to commence legal processes under Environmental Damage regulations to make both EA and NRW acknowledge the impact of poultry farming. The full BBC story can be read here.

In other news, the Environment Agency has renewed restrictions on salmon fishing on the River Wye in England in response to the decline in migratory salmon stocks. We reported similar news recently of restrictions in Wales imposed by NRW, in response to the decline in migratory salmon stocks.