Save Our Severn campaigner Paul Cawthorne on water industry report

Shropshire Star

Save Our Severn campaigner Paul Cawthorne gives his reaction to the report by the Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, that states Ofwat should be scrapped and replaced by a new, more powerful "integrated regulator"

Transcript

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?

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