The River Guardians project six months in

As you probably know ERA’s own river monitoring has ceased as we are delighted that the Western Sussex Rivers Trust (WSRT) are now running a whole catchment river monitoring project and ERA’s surveyors have become WSRT ‘River Guardians’. Recently the WSRT hosted a six month review of this project, giving us an overview of what these early results are showing us.

According to the Rivers Trust’s State of Our Rivers Report, no English river is in good overall health and just 15% are in good ecological health. Our River Rother is no exception and has a host of issues. The data from the River Guardians project will help develop our understand these issues.

Turbidity

One of the features we record is the turbidity of the water – how murky it is. Given the Rother’s sandy river banks, and the amount of arable farming in its vicinity, turbidity can be an issue. 10% of surveys during Winter/Spring when there was heavy rainfall recorded poor turbidity, but this went down to 0.85% during dry spells in Spring/early Summer.

Phosphates

Phosphates (mostly associated with sewage): less than 50% of surveys achieved Good Status, 34% Moderate, 18% Poor.

It is particularly interesting to note the difference in phosphate reading above and below Petersfield Wastewater Treatment Works.

Nitrates

Consistently elevated readings for nitrates (mostly associated with fertilisers) have been recorded catchment wide, with high readings notable downstream of arable land. As this is true of tributaries south of the Rother, it begs the question why only the area north of the Rother is designated a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone.

Invasive Non-Native Species

25 sites surveyed recorded the presence of Himalayan Balsam (found all along the Rother and some sites on the Stor) and seven sites recorded Giant Hogweed (all Upper Arun sites).

Pollution

Picture credit:istock

In general, sources of water pollution include: agriculture (sediment and agrichemicals), Combined Sewer Overflows, land management (various spraying), road run-off (heavy metals, petrol, rubber, spills from collisions, chemicals used to extinguish vehicle fires etc.), private outfalls (from septic tanks or misconnected pipes), pharmaceuticals, industrial waste, dog flea and tick treatments (insecticide). Plus litter.

Reporting Issues

We were reminded that anybody can, and should, report an environmental or pollution incident to the Environment Agency (EA) on 0800 807060, being careful to record the incident number and feeling free to make subsequent reports to the EA if the situation persists.

Looking to the Future

Once 12 months of data have been collected it will be possible to generate ‘score cards’ for the river which give a simple visual overview of the state of the river. I will make this information available to ERA members in due course, but do let me know of any others who would like to receive a periodic score card for the Rother (riparian landowners? anglers? swimmers?) and I can pass their details on to the Rivers Trust.

The most exciting news of the evening was that WSRT has discovered a handheld device which can be used at the river side to detect and quantify E. coli bacteria in the water. This has been an aspiration of some or our original ERA river surveyors for a very long time. We had not been able to discover a logistically achievable and affordable way of doing this. It remains to be seen if the device proves affordable as each one costs between £3000 - £4000.  Does anybody know of any grants that might help with such a purchase or, maybe, a local philanthropist!?!

At the event, it was pleasing to look around the room and recognise various ERA members. By supporting this project we are part of river monitoring work that citizen scientists throughout the country are involved in. As the Environment Agency is not able to undertake all the river monitoring it was once able to do, due to severe funding cuts, it is incredibly important that those of us in a position to undertake citizen science projects such as this one get out there and get involved. The EA can then take action at the sites where we have discovered there is an issue, targeting work where it is most needed.

Please either contact WSRT directly or let me know if you might be interested in becoming a River Guardian.

All images reproduced here by kind permission of Western Sussex Rivers Trust, unless otherwise stated.