Why saving Britain’s rivers means more than cleaning up sewage

British policymakers will have to deal with more than sewage if they want to save the country’s rivers, researchers warn.

River experts and scientists gathered at the UK’s annual river restoration conference in Birmingham last week. A recurring theme of the two-day meeting was the fact that officials and the public were paying too much attention to excessive amounts of sewage discharged by water companies, leaving almost all rivers in the UK in an unnatural state. was not paying enough attention to

“Even if we could solve all the sewage and agricultural pollution affecting our rivers, we would only be half the solution,” said Mark Nowra of Cranfield University in the UK, one of the organizers of the event. said it was. new scientist.

According to a European Union project, only 3% of the UK’s rivers flow unimpeded. “Over time, the rivers straightened, widened and were often covered with concrete, leaving little aquatic habitat diversity,” the conservation group said. One Southeast he says Rivers Trust’s Bella Davis.

“Imagine you are a fish in a straight concrete channel like this. When it rains and water flows from the land into the river, you are faced with a wall of water that is difficult to swim in and has no place to hide. You’d be swept downstream and out of the river,” says Davies. “Fish populations disappear over time as there is no place to live, river gravel and vegetation to lay their eggs, and river structures support the diversity of aquatic insects they need to eat. plug.”

It is often said that only 14% of England’s rivers achieve good ecological status, but the most common reason rivers fail to achieve this designation is due to physical alteration. has not received much attention. 41% of his waterways in England fail to do this. measurement.

Chris Spray of the University of Dundee, UK, says rivers were historically straightened to make way for roads and railways with little regard for wildlife impacts.

“Many freshwater fish species, such as Atlantic salmon and trout, not only need cool, clean water to survive, they also lay eggs, hide from predators, and find food.

So many people at the meeting discussed solutions to restore the river to a more natural state. One is re-meandering, in which an artificially straightened river bends again to restore its natural flow. This will increase the amount of water carried by rivers, reduce the risk of flooding, create multiple types of water flows in rivers, and increase aquatic biodiversity, Spray said.

Last year, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) launched a Landscape Restoration Plan. It’s not just rivers, but half of the 22 projects funded as part of it involved restoring natural processes in rivers and streams. These costs around £400,000 each. Defra plans to expand the scheme to pay for 25 more projects in the coming months.

DJ Ghent The UK Environment Agency said at a conference that it hopes to finance 200 such projects by 2030. These costs are covered by fines imposed on water companies for various regulatory violations, such as illegal discharge of sewage.

However, many people at the conference said such funding alone would not be sufficient to tackle the man-made conditions of many rivers. We hope that more funding will be provided once the public understands the seriousness.

“The public doesn’t even know most rivers are physically modified,” he says. “People have grown up with rivers that artificially look straight and have weirs,” he says. “So it doesn’t seem abnormal.”