If you watched Dirty Business you will be outraged, shocked and sad. How is it that this country has let our rivers be polluted whilst we look the other way? That’s how the Ilkley Clean River group started, watching our river turn brown with sewage pollution, getting a group of local talented and outraged people together and working out how we were going to get our river cleaned up.
Many of you have joined our Town Meetings, where we shared our citizen science data, the data from our FOIs, and tried to hold the regulators and our elected representatives to account. Just like Ash and Peter in Dirty Business, we poured over spreadsheets of data, tested our water with the support of our Town Council, and wrote hundreds of letters. We went to see James Bevan at the EA, the appointment secured under threat (from John Grogan our MP at the time) of being called to the Select Committee if he didnt. He agreed the data was awful and action had to be taken quickly – and then he ignored us. The EA told us to stop reporting incidents; they told us the water here was good enough to drink. They also told us they didn’t have the money to regulate our water (the subject of Episode 3).
Bathing Status tipped the balance for us here, along with the massive support from local and national media, and a couple of visits from the CEO of Ofwat (now gone – the scalp the water industry wanted), along with more data from Ash and Peter so show the extent of the illegal polluting here. Ofwat’s visit lead to Ilkley being in the new ‘accelerator’ programme to move the improvements along quickly.
Here we are, 8 years later and the new scheme is nearly ready. But don’t be fooled that this is a massive investment in new infrastructure. The water companies have not maintained our water system, and were legally bound to treat our sewage. The new storage tanks, reed beds and wetland do just that – they treat our sewage in a way it should have been treated for years. So whilst this is a massive benefit to our river, it is outrageous that it has taken so much effort, and that there is no plan to clean up every river in this country.
Meanwhile, we (the Ilkley Clean River group) have carried on investigating local pollution incidents, and been part of the team showing the extent of chemical pollution of our rivers. We have had to take our campaign for clean water nationally, working with Ash and Peter from WASP and a number of other leading campaign groups across the country through the Sewage Campaign Network (SCN) – to try to get the public’s voice heard. We support hundreds of campaign groups around the country now, starting off where we started, facing the same long slog to get their rivers cleaned up. One of those – Save Our Swale, has just entered the final round for bathing status this year. Friends at Nidd Action secured theirs last year.
When the government announced its ‘independent’ commission, staffed by DEFRA, and overseen by a banker to just investigate regulation, who then spend most of his time talking to investors; we set up The People’s Commission on the Water Sector – a truly independent commission, tasked with looking at the cause of our water crisis in public. It found that 90% of the world’s water is in public ownership because it delivers better outcomes and cheaper water. The lessons from these experiences of taking back control of water, could be learnt in this country to design a bespoke modern public water system. The shouts of ‘its too expensive’ have been fully rebutted with robust evidence, showing that it is privatisation that is more expensive. Not only that, the People’s Commission called for a national strategy to ensure we conserve and protect our water, and a model of ‘polluter pays’ with pharmaceutical companies paying for thier pollution.
Currently the SCN is doing just what Jason Watkins said at the end of Dirty Business – campaigning to ‘put the people who care in charge of our water.’ `
Meanwhile after Dirty Business our email inbox is awash with people from across the country telling us about contracting EColi, sending pictures of sewage pollution, asking what to do. So far the government is refusing to budge and is planning to shackle us to privatisation for years to come, with the promise of ever higher bills, increasing water poverty, eye watering debt payments to offshore owners from our bills, and no end in sight to the sewage pollution of our rivers, lakes and seas.
Perhaps now, when elections loom, all parties might listen. No one should be worried about going in the sea on your holidays. No one should have to spend the time we have spent here at ICRG to get a 1 mile stretch of river cleaned up. No one should have to worry about the cost of their water bill. Water is a necessity. If you care please do read our blog updates, email your MP, vote in our petitions, join our mailing list and make a noise.
We go to Westminster on the 17th March to campaign again, with our colleague grassroots campaign groups, and with Channel 4 and the Dirty Business team. Dirty Business is our story too.
Other links
The People’s Commision on the Water Sector
The Sewage Campaign Network
