WWT has published a report ‘Wetlands for Water Quality: Creating and managing treatment wetlands to improve water quality. Read the press release here and the executive summary below.

Executive summary

Wetlands can play a vital role in helping us tackle our current water quality crisis by filtering out pollutants that pass through naturally occurring wetlands.

These amazing qualities can also be harnessed and amplified through creating treatment wetlands and it is these that are the focus of this document.

Just 14% of our rivers are in good health. All fail chemical standards. This means every river in England is now polluted beyond legal limits. The Environment Agency estimated that it would cost around £17.5 billion between 2015 and 2052 to bring the UK’s waters to ‘good status’ and generate benefits worth £22.5 billion.

Water pollution is causing damage to our natural environment and making us sick. With rising public concern about the state of our water environment, now is the time to clean up our act.

There are a range of ways to tackle the challenges of Britain’s polluted waters, and wetlands should be a key part of this. Unlike other solutions, wetlands not only improve water quality, they also provide numerous co-benefits for both people and wildlife.

To make the very best use of these multiple benefits, we need a comprehensive effort from government and stakeholders to work together to embrace this new approach.

There is also a blog for Green Alliance highlighting the role of wetlands in improving water quality.