‘Act now to stop the Ure becoming the Wensleydale sewer’
New campaign group forming to clean up the River Ure in North Yorkshire
More than 100 people packed into Leyburn’s Methodist Church for a public meeting about pollution in the River Ure last night.
After presentations from the various groups on the front line of river health, the assembled group heard stomach churning experiences from members of the audience including:
Untreated human waste and plastics piling up on land near a sewage outflow becoming so bad the landowner needed Yorkshire Water to clean it up
Local angling groups searching for trout and finding none from that years spawning visible in some stretches of water
Thousands of hours of sewage discharges being recorded
But sewage isn’t the only challenge to the ecology of the Ure with the increasing intensification of dairy herds in the area also being blamed as a major polluter.
Eddie Wyvill, chair of the Yorkshire Dales Salmon Group (YDSG), gave an impassioned plea for action to be taken to stop large amounts of slurry spreading on monoculture rye grassland which is planted, sprayed and cut regularly for cattle.
“What makes a river is what lives in it - the fish and insects live side by side. Having nothing but rye grass means no pollinators. We all know when the slurry is spread and the whole Dale stinks.”
It was all a far cry from the past experiences of the meeting organiser Alistair Dinsdale who opened the meeting recalling his early years in the Dale when spring water was commonly available and waters were teeming with life: “I’ve spent many years supporting the Ure and seen the gradual decline of the health of the river.
“We need to act now to monitor the river before the Ure becomes the Wensleydale sewer.”
Attending this meeting gave me serious deja vu. It’s almost a year since I was sat at Richmond town hall for the launch of what has now become the Save Our Swale (SOS) campaigning group.
But there was an interesting new development - representatives from Yorkshire Water (YW) were in attendance in Leyburn. Having set up a river health team at the start of this year, the intention is for that team to work alongside the community groups to support monitoring and react to reported problems.
Clever PR to stem growing anger or genuine intervention on an environmental crisis? Only time will tell, but greater communication can surely only be a positive move.
Like SOS and the other groups looking after the Nidd and the Wharfe, people have turned into citizen scientists to undertake water quality testing and fly monitoring in order to push YW and regulator the Environment Agency to take action.
It is intended that a group will now form in Wensleydale to undertake similar activities for the Ure. We’ll be following the progress at this website and via the weekly newsletter which is available free of charge via the button below.
If you want to see how each of the York and North Yorkshire mayoral candidates will act on sewage pollution ahead of casting your vote tomorrow, click on their names here:
Keane Duncan, Conservative (No response)
PS. Don’t forget your photo ID on polling day as it is now required to vote.