Our rivers are in danger

Our inquiry

In October 2020, the Chair of our committee introduced a bill in Parliament. The bill proposed to make water companies ensure that untreated sewage is not released into rivers and other inland waters like canals and lakes. Our committee then started investigating the water quality of our rivers, launching an inquiry that December. We soon realised that the health of our rivers is about more than just sewage pollution.

Regulation of water quality in the UK is largely handled by the devolved governments of England, Scotland, and Wales. Here, we’ve primarily focused on rivers in England. But rivers flow across borders, and occasionally borders run down the middle of rivers. Many of the issues we looked into are also relevant for other parts of the UK too.

At least twenty rivers and inland waters run through the constituencies of our committee members, from Woodsmill Stream and Glynde Reach to the rivers Brent, Avon, and Trent.

As covid-19 restrictions allowed, we were able to see some issues and potential solutions first-hand. We went to the Thames Water waste water treatment works at Burford. There, we saw examples of nature-based solutions to wastewater treatment like human-made wetlands. We took a trip to the River Windrush in the Cotswolds, facilitated by the campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP). On that visit we spoke to trained citizen scientists who regularly monitor the water quality in the area.

1.The Environment Agency must extend the number of substances it regularly monitors in rivers. The data that is being collected does not provide a comprehensive picture of risks to human health, aquatic life, or microplastic contamination in rivers. We recommend a UK-wide survey of emerging pollutants and microplastic pollution of river environments, including an assessment of their potential impact on aquatic ecology.

2. The use of plastic in single-use hygiene products should be prohibited, with exemptions only provided for medical requirements. The Government should adopt
the measures outlined in the Plastics (Wet Wipes) Bill to prohibit the manufacture and sale of single use cleaning and hygiene products containing plastic.

3. Swim England told us that 2.1 million people swam in rivers, lochs, lakes and seas in 2017/18. Throughout our inquiry we heard that more people started using rivers over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Every community in the country should have access to waters—whether coastal or inland—that are safe for people to swim in without running the risk of falling ill.

Regulators and water companies have made a great deal of progress since the 1990s in cleaning up and monitoring our coastal waters so that they are fit for bathing. This progress must now be extended to rivers. Designation of stretches of river as bathing waters will help to drive coordinated action to improve water quality.

We recommend that the Government actively encourage the designation of at least one widely-used stretch of river for bathing in each water company area by 2025.

Cleaning up our rivers is important for public health and vital to protect wildlife. The world is experiencing an extinction crisis and freshwater ecosystems are on the front line.