In October 2021, 265 Conservative MPs voted down an amendment to the Environment Bill that would have stopped water companies dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea. The vote sparked an outcry that has yet to die down, and has spawned a new branch of citizen science. Across the country, campaigners organised anti-sewage marches. This included many in East Anglia – an area rich in rivers and rare chalk streams.
The Environment Agency (EA) weighed in on the issue last month with a scathing report, which found that water companies are getting worse at tackling sewage pollution. In the report, EA Chair Emma Howard Boyd recommended that bosses of water companies responsible for serious and deliberate pollution incidents should be jailed and struck off as directors so they cannot move on to other companies.
Campaigners on Twitter – including anti-sewage champion, singer Feargal Sharkey – reacted with fury this week at the news that bosses of water companies across England had given themselves a 21 percent increase in bonuses. The news coincided with the closure of a number of beaches across East Anglia as a result of releases of untreated sewage. The hashtag #ToriesAreDestroyingOurCountry has been trending on Twitter.
"It’s time to admit that water privatisation has been a failure."
— Feargal Sharkey (@Feargal_Sharkey) August 20, 2022
"In 2018, Michael Gove... said that England’s nine regional water... companies had paid out 95 per cent of their profits to shareholders between 2007 and 2016."
Polluting for profit.https://t.co/HTNnlXjGfn
River Deben ‘Citizen Science’ programme
It is against this backdrop that some recreational users of the River Deben (pronounced ‘Deeben’) in east Suffolk decided to take matters into their own hands. They have formed a ‘Citizen Science’ testing programme, supported by the University of Suffolk. Recreational use of the river boomed during the pandemic lockdowns. But there was an increasing realisation that the waterway was suffering with high levels of pollution and toxicity that threatened wildlife and, on occasion, poisoned swimmers.
Residents living near the river are now being trained in how to take water samples which they bring in to Woodbridge town hall to be tested for E.coli. They have been carrying out tests along the length of the estuary all this year, with results consistently showing an unacceptably high presence of E.coli in the water.
Shocking results from the latest test
The latest test, shown in the main photo, was the worst result so far. The image shows a 3M Petrifilm plate containing a 1ml sample taken from Martlesham Creek – an inlet from the Deben. A volunteer took the sample on 18 August 2022, near an Anglian Water sewage treatment plant, close to high tide.
The sample was then incubated for 24 hours at 42°C. This allowed any E.coli colonies to form. Each blue dot is an individual colony. A table issued by DEFRA states that 1000 colonies per 100 ml is “poor”, and in these cases a sign must be erected to warn against swimming. As the test is only 1ml, there should be less than ten dots within the circle.
A volunteer counted 390 dots in the sample, meaning that the proportion of E.coli in the sample was 39 times the DEFRA-defined limit.
This video details the history of the testing programme and how it works. It is a call for action through citizen science and pressure from the community of those who love the Deben.
Produced by VideoEast & Malcolm Hodd
