How clean and healthy is your local stream or river? And how do you find out? That’s one of the questions Earthwatch Europe set out to answer when it established its Great UK WaterBlitz earlier this year.
The idea was a simple – equip ordinary people with testing kits and ask them to take samples from any watercourse they choose. These are sent to Imperial College London to test for the presence of harmful nutrients such nitrates and phosphates and a wide variety of other chemicals, including caffeine, nicotine, antidepressants, anti-inflammatory drugs, pain relievers and pesticides.
The first WaterBlitz took place in June this year, then another in September, where more than 5,000 citizen scientists braved the wettest weekend of the year (at that time) to collect their samples, and Earthwatch can now reveal the results.
Overall, the regions of the country with streams and lakes in the poorest state were in the Thames and Anglian river catchments, though the county of Rutland in the Midlands was the worst county – none of the samples collected there were acceptable, under guidelines drawn up by the government’s water regulator, the Environment Agency, for levels of nitrates or phosphates.
Best in show were West Glamorgan in South Wales and Kirkcudbrightshire in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland – for both of these areas, all the samples tested were acceptable.
“Our Waterblitz provides an excellent snapshot across the entire nation over a given weekend of the state of our freshwater bodies,” says Earthwatch’s director of science Dr Sasha Woods. “This gives us a national picture of freshwater quality that just can’t be achieved by [state] monitoring bodies in the same way.”
Dr Leon Barron, reader in environmental sciences at Imperial College London, says programmes such as the WaterBlitz allow members of the public to engage with the issue of water quality in a meaningful way. “They can take the information they learn and talk to their families and their communities and try to effect change where change can be made,” he adds.
Nitrates and phosphates largely come from agricultural fertilisers and untreated sewage, and they impact freshwater through a process called eutrophication – they create an excessive nutrient load which precipitates uncontrolled plant and algae growth, leading to increased bacterial activity that then causes oxygen depletion.
In the worst cases, it can lead to huge die-offs of fish and other aquatic animals.
Many other chemicals in our waterways are also harmful. Caffeine – largely excreted by people who consume caffeinated drinks – was found in every sample. Its impacts are not well understood, but the report released by Earthwatch suggests its “discharge into natural waters may add to the negative impacts of other environmental factors, such as temperature change.”
Caffeine – largely excreted by people who consume caffeinated drinks – was found in every sample.
Barron says that you see changes in metabolic activity in fish as a result of caffeine contamination which can affect reproduction, development and even lead to mortality events. But he adds: “The chemicals we are seeing in our rivers don’t necessarily lead to fish kills, but they disrupt the balance of nature so the ecosystem doesn’t function in the way it should.”
The Government has promised to tackle the crisis in our rivers, and legislation to be introduced into this Parliament will take action on water company executives’ bonuses and make monitoring of sewage outlets mandatory.
“The move to greater transparency is a step in the right direction,” says Woods. “But there’s no quick fix to this problem and it’s not something we can just legislate our way out of.” Instead, it will take all stakeholders – the government, water companies, farmers and landowners, communities, environmental NGOs and scientists – to all work together.
According to Barron, there’s now a huge impetus because of how public opinion has changed in the past decade. “That’s evident from the number of people who signed up to the Earthwatch programme – myself included. I did it with my kids, and thought it was so good, I had to do more.”
So, what are you waiting for? Sign up now to be a WaterBlitzer!
More stories about the environment
- Welcome to 'Stage 0': the US-inspired experiment that has transformed an English valley into a wildlife paradise
- Hedgehog SOS: vital new plan could save Britain's favourite animal from extinction
- UK’s first bison bridges take shape in Kent woodland
- Pine martens return to Devon after being absent for more than a century
