A couple of days ago I listened to a fantastic and informative zoom talk given by the Friends of the River Marden hosted by Avon Needs Trees. The talk described the fascinating aquatic ecosystems in the River Marden, and the River Avon at Chippenham. At the end of the talk I asked the question –<\/p>\n
Should the River Marden and River Avon be Granted Legal Rights?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now that might seem a rather fanciful or possibly philospohical question, but it is not without precedent.<\/p>\n
But why would I ask such a question? Aren’t the rivers already protected?<\/p>\n
Well if you watch the talk below you’ll see that the River Marden’s water quality is only considered moderate. Just upstream on the Marden is the Calne sewage works. Ecologist Harriet Alvis describes how at one point when working in the Marden next to the Avon Needs Trees site they had to evacuate the water as raw sewage started to pump into the river. If you saw the BBC Panorama investigation<\/a>\u00a0into sewage discharge, you’ll know that water companies across the country are regularly illegally discharging sewage into rivers. Couple this with misconnected sewage systems into storm drains – such as that at Emery gate<\/a>, phosphate run-off from fields, and pollutant run-off via storm drains which effectively connect straight to the river, and we have a pretty dire picture for the ecology of the river, wildlife, kayakers and wild swimmers.<\/p>\n
Add in the possibility of tens of thousand more houses for Chippenham and their associated sewage requirements, surface pollutant runoff from new impermeable surfaces via storm drains into the river, and it’s a pretty poor picture. With increased heavy rainfall predicted through climate change we really aren’t mitigating or adapting our infrastructure fast enough to cope with these changes.<\/p>\n