Chicken manure has turned river into ‘sewage dump’, Parliament told
A river that flows between Wales and England has been turned into a sewage dump by “chicken shit”, Parliament has been told.
The stark assessment of pollution in the River Wye and its main cause was highlighted at Westminster by long-time resident Lord Lipsey.
The Labour peer said he had lived with his wife in the Wye Valley in Wales for nearly 30 years and went wild swimming in the river, but told how it was a “deteriorating experience”.
He also pointed to the declining salmon population as evidence of the river’s ailing environmental health.
Agricultural pollution
The Wye, which runs for 130 miles from central Wales to the Severn Estuary in south-west England, was downgraded by Natural England to “unfavourable” for wildlife in 2023 after years of exposure to agricultural pollution and phosphates.
Manure spread over farmland to help crop growth is washed into the river by rainfall where the excess nutrients can cause prolonged algal blooms, harming plant and fish life.
The condition of the river has led to legal action by anti-pollution campaigners.
Lord Lipsey raised his concerns as peers debated reforms aimed at cracking down on the discharge of sewage into Britain’s rivers and coastal waters.
‘Chicken shit’
He said: “Why has this happened? There are various causes, but overwhelmingly the most important is – I use the word, whatever the risk of offending – chicken shit.
“Something like 80% of the pollution in the Wye is caused by chicken shit that is not moved off the farms, lies on the fields and is driven by water into the stream, where it does untold harm.”
He added: “Residents such as us complain about children who are sick after swimming, rotten egg odours, opaque green pea-soup blooms and brown slime on the bottom.
“It is not the Wye that we moved next to 30 years ago. This beautiful river is being turned into a sewage dump.”
The Water (Special Measures) Bill is being introduced by the Government against a backdrop of public fury at dumping of sewage by water firms, rising prices and dividend payouts.
Under the proposed law, company bosses face up to two years in jail if they obstruct investigations while regulators will have beefed up powers to ban bonuses if environmental standards are not met.
Lord Lipsey said: “At the very least this Bill and the debates on it present a matchless opportunity to promote the cause of this iconic river and stop it dying before our eyes.”
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Yeah but farmers be the holiest of guardians of the land and we should worship them and support them to the hilt.
Two way street farmers, you want subsidies, they come with caveats.
The industrialisation of livestock farming is driven by the demands of supermarkets for even greater economies, more for less, and the greed of some landowners. Effluent is a major problem but so too is animal welfare. There is a role for Government in all this. Simply cap unit sizes, limit the numbers in any given area and enforce a programme of improvements on storage and disposal of effluents. All doable if people chose to act rather than just talk.
90% of this is from farmers on the English side!