11 Dec 2024

Europe’s water is under pressure from pollution, over-use, habitat degradation and increasing impacts of climate change. Improving the resilience and health of Europe’s lakes, rivers and groundwaters is an urgent priority to secure good-quality water for people and nature.   Photo credit: David Ruh   ‘EEA Signals 2024 – Towards healthy and resilient waters in […]

11 Dec 2024

Concerns about PFAS pollution have increased in many European countries but comprehensive monitoring data are often limited. A European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing ‘PFAS pollution in European waters’, shows that most monitored rivers, transitional and coastal waters and a large part of lakes in Europe are polluted with at least one of the many extremely […]

11 Dec 2024

The BBC reports that water companies are planning to build a pipeline network to move treated sewage away from conservation areas and into rivers, lakes and seas which do not have the same legal protection.   Photo credit: Gavin Young   The work will be funded by customers and the water regulator, Ofwat, has provisionally […]

11 Dec 2024

Following a successful prosecution by the Environment Agency, Anglian Water has been fined £300,000 for illegally discharging sewage into a watercourse that feeds into the Broads Special Area of Conservation in Norfolk. On 5 December 2024, Anglian Water Services Limited was sentenced at Basildon Magistrates Court to pay a fine of £300,000, alongside £21,896.56 in […]

11 Dec 2024

One of England’s top-rated water companies is using an accounting trick to artificially inflate its balance sheet by more than a billion pounds, BBC Panorama has discovered.     Severn Trent Water claims that an investment is worth £1.68bn in its accounts, when in reality it has no value to the overall business. The made-up […]

10 Dec 2024

WWT, the charity for wetlands and wildlife, has today announced that it has agreed the purchase of 148-hectares of low-lying land on the Awre peninsula for a pioneering saltmarsh restoration project. As part of the organisation’s mission to restore wetlands and unlock their power, they plan to create a new saltmarsh nature reserve in the […]

10 Dec 2024

Water category and overall first prize winner, Pot-bellied Seahorse Portrait,  2024 Nature Conservancy Oceania photo contest. ‘To capture the subtle movement of the sea tulips while keeping the seahorse in focus, I chose a slightly longer shutter speed. This allowed the gentle motion of the water to blur slightly, giving a sense of the underwater […]

10 Dec 2024

Shell and Equinor are combining their UK oil and gas assets in a joint venture that will become the country’s largest independent producer. Last month, the UK government increased a “windfall” tax – initially introduced in 2022 following an energy price spike after the Ukraine war. The hike brings the headline tax on the sector to 78%, […]