Stop Ure Pollution: River campaign group formed
On a mission to have the Dales river clean enough to SUP!
About 100 people filed in for a pre-match meeting to talk river pollution in Leyburn last night.
The majority had previously attended the first public meeting on the topic and were keen to hear of progress in the moves to clean up the River Ure.
The tldr was:
A steering group of six people (a few of which were present) has formed to run SUP, chaired by Professor Richard Loukota
About 40 volunteers have come forward to help test the quality of the water as part of a citizen science project
The group needs to hear from people with social media skills to start a group Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter etc.
The first water monitoring is proposed to take pace before the end of August
The SUP group is the latest local campaign group to establish and will hope to raise awareness of river health in a similar way to the Save our Swale (SOS) group in Richmond, Nidd Action Group and Ilkley Clean River.
But there will be an important difference in the group’s aims. Along with working to stop sewage discharges from Yorkshire Water and upgrading water quality, SUP has made one of its three priorities the contentious issue of slurry dispersal.
With the Dales being such an important dairy producing area, the water testing will look at identifying and quantifying the impact of slurry discharge.
The meeting heard from Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust (YDRT) Charlotte Simons who is helping the group coordinate the water testing volunteers having previously supported other campaigns.
She explained the strategy - to test along the length of the river catchment across two days (one dry, one wet). The water samples will be testing at an independent laboratory (paid for with a donation by Yorkshire Water) and the data analysed to inform next actions.
The tests will be investigating:
e-coli levels
levels of phosphates and nitrates
the conductivity of the water
the temperature of the water
Armed with the data, the group will be able to challenge Yorkshire Water about illegal sewage dumping as well as work towards mitigations such as tree planting or fencing to prevent cattle entering the river.
The approach wasn’t universally popular with those attending the meeting. One woman who swims in the Ure most days felt it was obvious where the pollution was coming from - sewage outflows - so action should be taken straight away.
Another attendee suggested that leaky old septic tanks from off-grid properties could be part of the cause and one man proposed putting cameras on some sewage outflows where dumping was known.
What’s next?
The route to a clean river is potentially as long and winding as the river itself. Earlier this year it would have been possible to collect the sampling data and apply to the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for Bathing Water Status (BWS). That prized status requires regulator the Environment Agency to carry out regular monitoring and take action. However, that route was suddenly closed off in May and applications for BWS have been suspended until spring 2025 at the earliest.
Simons told the meeting that this would at least give the group ample opportunity to get the data to make the case for the extra monitoring and be ready for when applications potentially re-open.
And then there’s politics…
Given there will be a new government in place for Spring 2025, the next steps for Bathing Water Status or any possible new scheme is obviously unknown, but two of the candidates looking for your votes were at the meeting last night to make their case.
Daniel Callaghan (Lib Dem) and Kevin Foster (Green) addressed the meeting briefly and you can see the stall they set out in our report from last week’s hustings at the Swale here. (The full list of those seeking votes in the constituency, including the Prime Minister, can be found here.)
If you’d like to volunteer for any of the activities above, get in touch with SUP clerk Pip Pointon via pipspatch@googlemail.com or contact YDRT.
We’ll be following this SUP campaign, along with the others, as things develop. The Northern Eco is proud to have been reporting on the river campaigns in detail for the past year.