The Evenlode

Wed 24 Jun 2020, 10:22

I am not a regular participant in the forum I am afraid so had missed Rod's postings and the responses until now, but having been alerted to it, I just want to chip in something about the Evenlode Catchment Partnership in response. 

As Rod noted the ECP is hosted by Wild Oxfordshire, and has been proactive over the last 5 years in dealing with flood reduction measures, with a number of different projects which I am happy to share more information about, which focussed on dealing with acute challenges, particularly upstream from us around Milton and Ascot. However, that is by no means the only thing that the partnership has done, and water quality and the challenges from rural STWs have been very much an issue for us, too, just not so high profile in terms of what was shared on the website. ECP have been working with the parish council in Milton for several years now, to support them with on-going challenges with their STW. (more info on that at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-46653684). ECP are fully supportive of WASP, sharing information and inviting them to talk at their 2019 AGM,  held in Milton village hall.  

I should say that the ECP receives a massive grant of £7,500 from DEFRA every year to run it, so as you can imagine it is run largely by volunteers and a very slim staff, and hosted and supported by the tiny charity, Wild Oxfordshire. Anyone who is keen to be involved is welcome to join us, so Rod (and others) please do feel free to do so. I am hoping that we can get the Town Council more involved with this in future, especially in supporting the fantastic work that WASP have carried out.

Ironically we had planned to have a March meeting with speakers to build more engagement in Charlbury, so that ECP could explain more about who is involved and how others could become active with us, as a follow on from some of the environmental initiatives that were kicked off with February's Climate Emergency workshop but of course Covid put paid to that!

As those who know me will attest, I am very keen on action rather than endless meetings, but of course the river naturally links all of us who are concerned with its health, and as others have commented here, all the rivers around this region, and across much of England are exhibiting the same terrible quality issues. We need more data to hold the water companies and also DEFRA and the Environment Agency  to account for the frequent failures of the treatment systems, but this is costly in both equipment and people prepared to carry out routine monitoring: we do have some trained river fly monitoring folks in our community and could do more to develop this aspect of monitoring the health of the river, which is the approach they have taken in Milton, developing long-term data sets which are actually very powerful evidence of good health (or not!).

I would love to see us developing a community who share the love of our river and what it provides in terms of recreation and beauty, as well as a water supply (always under threat from over-abstraction, a risk that will only get worse if the Oxford-Cambridge growth arc goes ahead as planned!) as well as the repository for the treated effluent from our treatment works! 

Can I also say that there is a move to press Thames Water to adopt what is known as tertiary treatment of the effluent from the STWs, to take out the phosphorous but also many of the residual microbes and other potentially harmful substances from the treated effluent before it is released back into the river. Thames Water own a large area of land adjacent to the treatment beds at Charlbury STW which might offer that possibility, so I am sure there is scope for us to act locally, to be an exemplar of good practice, and to test out what works in a cost-effective way (at present the claim is that it is not cost effective to put this treatment into so many small local sources, yet these are cumulatively the source of 80% of the phosphorous in the river, which is currently failing in water quality and being targeted by Thames as a key pollutant that they want to reduce).

So in summary a lot of opportunities, and a very pressing problem, and really important that we build on the work that WASP are doing and press all the councillors to get involved in supporting them in challenging the powers that be to act now on what promises to become another national crisis if we don't act!