Late last week, anglers, landowners and river-keepers, conservationists and local residents turned up to stand up to the water company and speak up for our globally rare and uniquely vulnerable chalk streams.  

The latest statement from Southern Water suggests that the over-pumping plan has been paused.   

Whether it was the concerted media pressure and ‘the Feargal Sharkey effect’ or merely receding water levels directing the water company’s decisions is not clear, but the sewage has been suspended for now, at least.   

This is potentially a victory for campaigners and a reprieve for our freshwater wildlife, but the threat of accidental or ‘emergency’ pollution releases remains. We have yet to be reassured that this over-pumping plan won’t be enacted the next time we have an ‘unexpected’ downpour. 

Failing the Test 

With groundwater levels extremely high in the Chilbolton area and concerns about the sewage system being overwhelmed and resulting in wastewater entering homes, Southern Water had set up equipment in readiness to pump diluted but untreated sewage straight into the river at Cow Common – an area designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Incredibly, this is all permissible under the water company’s ‘Infiltration Reduction Plan’, agreed by the Environment Agency (EA). The EA has stressed that this should be a measure of last resort and state that they take cases of over-pumping seriously and would be monitoring the situation carefully.  

While monitoring is always welcome, what’s not clear is who will take responsibility for getting into this mess in the first place. It is surely not good enough for the water companies to simply grumble about the unpredictable weather, shrug shoulders and say, ‘There is nothing else we can do. Sorry’. This is, in essence, a problem of Southern Water’s own making. The state of the leaky, creaky infrastructure that underpins both their business model and our vital waste and water system has been well known for many years. As have the trends in more extreme weather events. Rather than investing for an inevitable rainy day, it feels to many that Southern Water bosses have been blithely making hay while the sun shines.    

Of course, it’s not as simple as Southern Water immediately increasing capacity, plugging the holes and polishing the pipes. From where we are today, we have to recognise that bringing the whole water system up to standard will take time and a whole lot of money. But in testing ‘preparedness’ for flooding in the Chilbolton area, did the water company and EA really exhaust all options for avoiding over pumping into the ‘protected’ sites of the River Test?   

Wessex Rivers Trust have suggested that ‘the only acceptable short-term option is to scale-up the removal of  wastewater by tankers, to facilities with both equipment capacity and to fully treat it before returning it to the environment’, whilst calling for greater and more urgent investment in sealing and/or upgrading of the sewage network where groundwater is a high risk. 

Under pressure

The protest against the plans at Chilbolton is, of course, one small example of the widespread public outcry at the state of our rivers and seas and the ongoing sewage scandal. In the face of this growing pressure, there has been a surge of official pronouncements.  Government have given water companies poor marks for performance, exacted cash commitments, published a plan and set the industry tough targets. Water companies themselves have joined in, publicly acknowledging things must and will change.    

In the meantime, however, it seems that we are expected to resign ourselves and our rivers to further pollution while we wait.  It feels like we are in a very vicious cycle of pollute, repent, repeat. 

The Government’s ambition is for our rivers to be restored to good health by 2063. With 39 years to go before the final exam, it’s possible for the industry, the inspectors, and the politicians to make paper promises and procrastinate on dealing with the hard work for now.   

In addition, the current design of environmental targets includes no requirement to focus investment where it’s most needed or could have the biggest impact. Recent research from the Angling Trust, which brings together evidence from citizen scientists, (including data contributed by the Trust) shows that phosphate pollution is often highest in the harder-to-deal-with upper reaches and rural catchments (including the Loddon and its tributaries and the Hampshire Avon, which both featured in the top 10 most polluted catchments mapped). However, the attention of water companies is predominantly focused on upgrading the major sewage works in order to more easily and cheaply hit their phosphate reduction targets. This, in effect, allows, as the Angling Trust puts it, ‘polluters to play accountancy versus ecology to meet environmental targets. Boasting about the level of investment but not delivering the environmental improvements needed.’  

A case in point

Just a few weeks ago we were alerted to another pollution issue – in this instance a manhole was overflowing, with sewage pouring onto land close to Nun’s Stream, a tributary just north of Winnall Moors Nature Reserve, running into the River Itchen. This time, however, it was not a near miss, it was a direct hit and it took 21 days to stop the sludge. 

Again, this situation was entirely avoidable. The condition of the pump and pipeline was known to be poor and yet no attention had been given to ensuring that the essential infrastructure was maintained and this special habitat was protected. Local people came out to monitor the impacts of this waste on the water quality, recording high levels of phosphates and ammonia. However, hidden away on private land, this toxic spill didn’t make a splash like the threat facing the Test last week and Southern Water’s own monitoring apparently showed that pollution levels ‘didn’t reach the threshold’ for concern.   

This is little or no comfort to anyone who cares for freshwater ecology. This wastewater overflow, together with the chemicals and toxins that are daily released or washed into our rivers, all add to the cumulative cocktail of contamination that has been leaching into our waterways for decades now.  The manhole mishap might not be the single cause of ecological catastrophe, but it definitely isn’t going to help. 

Love, sweat and tears

Over the past 60 years, the Wildlife Trust and our supporters have poured time, love and money into looking after these remarkable rivers. Our work at Winnall Moors since 2008 for example, has transformed the stretch of the Itchen into an incredible haven for wildlife and people. The 64 hectares of natural floodplain are home to kingfishers, water voles and brown trout and the carefully managed site acts as a vital natural flood defence for the neighbouring residential areas and city centre. In 2022, we were delighted to discover that the threatened native, white-clawed crayfish had returned – testament to the successful and sensitive management of the reserve. While this should be cause for celebration, the reality is that the long-term prospects of this nascent population are threatened by pollution that we are powerless to control. This is devastating not just for the wildlife that depends on the healthy habitat, but for all those involved in its care.    

Sadly, we see a similar story at other sites across the county, where we are constantly battling against external pollution pressures – with wider systemic failures forever frustrating our work to help nature recover.  

We also witness the exasperation and anger that is felt by some of our brilliant, passionate and enthusiastic volunteers through the Watercress and Winterbournes project. These individuals and groups, who have committed time and energy to restoring their local headwaters, are constantly aware that they are toiling against the tide of ever-increasing development, industrial and agricultural pollution and water-industry failures. 

We are seeing both our social and natural capital eroded, when instead we should be nurturing and harnessing these essential resources for everyone’s benefit.   

Special cases

With no river across England currently achieving good overall heath, we recognise that the issues of pollution are not unique to our local chalk streams. But we also know that these globally significant habitats, which should boast abundant and rich wildlife, are uniquely vulnerable to these pressures.   

We, like so many people across our counties, worry that despite our efforts to protect and restore these special places, our most precious freshwater ecosystems won’t survive the combination of climate change, pollution and extraction in the coming decades.      

Both the River Itchen and the River Test ‘enjoy’ high legal status – with sites designated as Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and SSSIs respectively. These prestigious labels supposedly afford these streams protection, and yet, as we have seen, they are still subjected to these poisonous problems. Meanwhile, the Meon and Loddon, our ‘Cinderella chalk streams’ (and arguably some of our finest examples) languish with limited, if any, safeguards. 

If proof is needed of the dismal condition of these chalk streams, you only need to look at how our genetically unique, Atlantic salmon are faring. Deteriorating water quality - especially in the estuarine reaches - is compounding the effects of climate change, (as was evident during the severe drought of 2022), resulting in a drastic decline in numbers. These salmon have been running substantially below sustainable conservation limits on the Test and Itchen for some time, and their status has been recently downgraded to ‘endangered’ – one of our iconic chalk stream species now at risk of extinction.   

Late last year, the Trust launched our Save our Chalk Streams campaign, supporting wider calls for bespoke, enhanced legal protections for all chalk streams.   

In response to the recommendations of CABA chalk stream strategy, the Government committed to develop a ‘Chalk Stream Recovery Pack’ and we are expecting this to be published in the coming months.   

This must be much more than a first aid kit to plaster over the problems. We need proper, urgent and intensive care.   

You can still contact your MP and urge them to champion chalk streams and push the Government and water industry to take further and faster action to Save our Chalk Streams.  

The capacity of these rivers and our residents to take this abuse is finite. The muck must stop here.   

*UPDATE: In a letter to local parish councillors this week, Southern Water's Chief Executive, Lawrence Gosden, stated that the pipes that had been set up to test 'readiness in an emergency' had been removed and that 'it was a mistake to do so, and I intervened to stop it'.  He further insisted that "It will not happen again... You have my personal assurance that we will not be pumping into the River Test.". 

A statement on the Southern Water website confirms that the water company is using tankers to transport excess waste water to nearby treatment works. You can read more here.