00:00Good morning, I'm Roy Briscoe, I'm the District Councillor for Westbourne in Chichester.
00:06This morning I've brought you to have a look at the River Ems, which as you can see is virtually dry.
00:14This is one of the rare chalk streams that we have in this country.
00:18There are 260 worldwide, 90% in this country, and this is what's happened to one of them due to over-abstraction by Portsmouth Water.
00:28They take 24 megalitres of water per day from the chalk aquifer, about three miles upstream from here,
00:39and that creates a tone of depression underneath the river, sucking the water out from the riverbed,
00:45leaving puddles like you can see, which the fish are stranded in and they die.
00:52We shouldn't be allowing this to happen.
00:54I've brought a motion forward to the District Council looking to see if we've got sufficient evidence to prosecute the Environment Agency
01:04because they license Portsmouth Water, taking the water.
01:09I'll stress, Portsmouth Water are complying with that license,
01:13but the Environment Agency have had a report since 2007 telling them that the river is being over-abstracted
01:21and they haven't changed that license.
01:24They've reviewed it and it's remained exactly the same.
01:27Portsmouth Water can take literally as much water as they want from the chalk aquifer, killing our river.
01:33But here we have to start, my vacation.
01:37So we're going to be going to how…
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01:47Prometean
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