00:00Well here we are at Colebrookdale where the Colebrookdale stream enters the
00:07River Severn. As you can see there's a grey area of water coming from this
00:12water course into the main river. Very sadly as you can also see there's no
00:17fish or weed in the river. I mean what more evidence do you need that there's a
00:23major problem? There's not even any weed in the main river as I can see here. Now
00:29this is a problem which was officially recognized by the Environment Agency
00:35about about a decade ago when they concluded that two miles of this stream
00:41and the river were affected by pollution. Why is it being allowed to carry on?
00:46It's unclear how much of the pollution at the moment here is relating to the
00:53sewage works just a few hundred meters upstream. I have checked the
00:59documentation and that overflowed for more than half an hour yesterday. There
01:05could also be a source of the pollution higher upstream in what's coming from
01:10Stony Hill toxic landfill site through the mine shafts because there's porous
01:16bottom through the mine shafts into the stream at Upper Furnace Pool and if you
01:23look at Upper Furnace Pool there's a chemical slick on the entrance entrance
01:27inlet to the southern inlet. So my big questions are what difference is a report
01:33in London going to make to the absence of minnows, trout, chub, dace and all the
01:41other lovely healthy fish that should be in this stream and why is there no
01:47ranunculus, none of the healthy waterweed present. Clearly there's a big problem
01:52here. I actually think that this is enough of a problem that instead of
01:58children being brought here from Dale End Play Park to paddle in this water, this
02:04should be fenced off until the problem is sorted. I haven't seen a risk assessment
02:09of this for child contact. Would you like your child paddling in sewage fungus?
