Faced with the poor and sometimes worsening state of their rivers, ordinary citizens can feel powerless. Who to call, how to get remedial action? Is it the water company’s fault, shouldn’t the Environment Agency be on the case? And it can be difficult – there are so many potential causes of problems, ranging from farming run-off, failing sewage infrastructure through to species invasion. The list flows on... But there is a way that ordinary residents can act – through the fast developing and exciting world of citizen science.
Across the country, concerned residents have turned to monitoring the state of the watercourses they hold dear, presenting the information in a compelling way and, in some cases, forcing officialdom to act. The best-known instances are those in the Wye Valley, where intensive poultry farming is the chief culprit, or the Windrush in the Cotswolds, where sewage spills have literally turned stretches of a once-beautiful river into a brown soup.
The problems in the Moorlands are not yet quite as dramatic, but they are real. As is the case across the country, all rivers fail the overall test of good health because of the presence of forever chemicals. But beneath that catch-all chemical failure, the picture in the Moorlands is more mixed, as the map in the Rivers Trust’s State of Our Rivers Report 2024 shows.
Of the rivers in the district, only the Manifold largely classes as ‘good’. The Dove, the Dane, the Churnet, the Tean and the Blithe typically come in as a blend of ‘moderate’ to ‘poor’. But there is a lag in these data: while some figures have been updated in the interim, the last full review by the Environment Agency was in 2022. The next is expected this year.
That reflects a fundamental issue in water quality monitoring; faced with swingeing cuts in its funding the Environment Agency has struggled to fulfil its statutory requirements. Even where rivers such as the Manifold class as ‘good’, there may be stretches with real problems. At the very moment this article is being written, the Severn Trent Storm Overflow Map is showing the Warslow sewage treatment site spilling yet again.
That’s why even the agencies concerned with water are now changing their attitude towards citizen science. Recognising the potential to fill the gaps and develop more constructive relationships, they are all now seeking to develop a framework in which the data collected by community groups can be made robust enough to augment their own reporting systems.
The Environment Agency has its own Citizen Science Projects. Locally, the EA’s Tim Pickering has been exceptionally supportive to Manifold CAN’s efforts in setting up river monitoring. Severn Trent, like other water companies rightly pilloried for past failures in coming clean on its track record, has also been supporting citizen science projects. But leaving any scepticism about the motives of these bodies behind, the key task now is to ensure that community-driven projects have a clear view of what is they wish to achieve, and the knowledge and tools to do that.
See our article on Local Citizen Science Action.