The Evenlode

Sun 26 Jul 2020, 12:36

If you were following the earlier posts on this thread you could be forgiven for thinking it’s all gone a bit quiet.  Well not for much longer!

So if you’re interested in / concerned about the state of ‘our river’ and haven’t already, do look at some of the links in previous posts, especially those for the Evenlode Catchment Partnership (the ECP), Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP) and WWF.   And whatever your political leanings, the Guardian ones also make for, let’s just say, interesting reading. 

If only for balance, the Times and Financial Times have also run articles featuring the wider problem of pollution of our rivers, which is clearly both a national and a local issue.  National in the sense that the regulatory, monitoring and enforcement regime needs to change – and local in both the state of the infrastructure and the effects the pollution has.  It’s encouraging that all sorts of groups and individuals are not only working on it but are popping all over the place, from the group of Thames swimmers featured on the regional TV news last week to a Shropshire MP who’s putting up a Private Members Bill in the hope of tackling it at the highest level.  Which it needs to be.

At local level, see e.g. Flora’s post re Charlbury’s Sewage Treatment Works.    And before it got to us here, the 2019 totals upstream were of 298 ‘incidents’ of discharge over 3305 hours.  By the time it got to the Thames, those ‘declared’ figures went up to 786 and 6149 – and they don’t include all sorts of smaller domestic, agricultural and other contributors, nor direct sewer overflows (eg Dyers Hill?).  That is, even if we trust them – the figures are supplied by Thames Water, as in the poacher telling the game keeper how many pheasants he’s shot.  No wonder the swimmers are up in arms – or up to them in it.   

Now let’s add in the effluent from the 2047 dwellings that are to be provided in Chipping Norton between 2011 and 2031 under WODC’s Local Plan, not to mention additional employment sites etc.  All of which (as I understand it) have a statutory right to connect to the main sewers but with no commensurate obligation on the water companies to make additional provision for them in their STWs.  Confess I may not have the full story on that yet – but hey, let’s find out!

So what can we do about it at local level?  I’m increasingly convinced of the need to act both practically through bodies like the ECP and politically via groups like WASP.  So let’s form our own, based on the Evenlode, and bring in or join up with others up and down stream.  You’ll see from their latest blog that WASP are holding an open ZOOM session on 30/07.  I hope to throw a few questions into that and then have a meeting here on 03/08 to take things forward.  Details to follow, let me know if interested.