 Although our rivers are in trouble there are things we can do ourselves to help them. The river Worth and it’s tributaries certainly fit into the picture of widespread river pollution outlined in the Paul Whitehouse programs. A look at the River Trust Poo Map, which details all the combined sewage outflows (CSO’s) in the country, shows that the Worth catchment has its fair share of CSO's and that they are regularly discharging raw sewage into the river. If you zoom the map to around Ingrow and click on the largest spots you will see that the South Street Keighley CSO (Permit no.WRA8110) discharged 83 times for a total of 1390 hours, Ingrow Lane CSO (Permit no. 3054 ) discharged 57 times for a total of 917 hours. You can also see that there are not full records for Ingrow Lane as there were technical problems, so the discharges may have been longer. In all there were 23 CSO’s discharging for 4,563 hours into the Worth catchment.
So the river has pollution problems. Some may say “Well it’s always been like that what’s new, it’ll never change”. We would say that shows limited ambition, the river has improved immensely since the days of heavy industrial pollution, with some TLC it could develop further to be a green ribbon running through our communities.
Even if you are not part of the Monitoring Hub you can still look out for pollution and other river issues. If you see anything you think looks wrong go to our Report an Incident page to find out how to report it. Failing that you can always join one of our weekly litter picks, contact us to find out when they are We hope that by a combination of local volunteer activity combined with pressure on our government to do the right thing nationally we will be able to improve conditions on the Worth and all our rivers.
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Paul was quite hard hitting but did he miss a target? Paul Whitehouse certainly didn’t pull any punches in his programs on river pollution in which he appears to lay the blame at the feet of the water companies, with a supporting role for farmers. However, in a way why would we be believe otherwise? The water companies are run by investment companies who are more interested in profit than in the quality of the water in our rivers. Yorkshire Water, for instance, is owned by the Kelda Group which is in turn owned by:
So we can’t expect the water companies to have the health of our rivers at heart. The only way to make them do the right thing is by regulation. There are two bodies that regulate the water companies:
One of the EA’s main regulatory duties is looking after our rivers. Unfortunately the Government has cut its funding by 56% since 2010 (Independent 29/8/22). Little surprise that the EA finds it increasingly difficult to monitor the quality of our rivers. We understand that in recent years the number of EA staff tasked with investigating pollution incidents on the Aire have dropped from ten to two which, inevitably, means less effective monitoring. That is two inspectors to cover the whole Aire catchment from Malham down to Goole! So it’s possible Paul Whitehouse missed an opportunity to point the finger at another culprit rather than just the Water Companies – the Government. But all is not lost, and in our next blog we will suggest ways in which we can do things locally to make a difference.  Pepper Pig tackles the sewage and wet wipe problem! |
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