Ellie's Weir...ed Blog

In this post our GIS whizz Ellie Spilsbury outlines some of the work we have been doing to identify ways to improve the sustainability of the fisheries in our rivers and hopefully aid the return of salmon for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.

Look closely and you will see hundreds of Minnows collecting at the bottom of this weir, unable to ascend. See the area in the water that looks dark brown; they are Minnows.



Visit each of the three sections for more detail:

A familiar Story

Data analysis with a Salmon Splash of professional opinion

(Tr)outcomes expected










A familar story

Once upon a time, our River Aire had the highest Salmon population of any Yorkshire river. Then came the Industrial Revolution, which saw the wool and fabric industry boom throughout Yorkshire. Mills were constructed accompanied by weirs to harness our river's energy. Although the mills are now closed and are becoming swanky new flats, the weirs often remain, isolating ecosystems that lie between them. Weirs disrupt the natural transport of sediment downstream, causing a build-up of silt and gravel behind the weir, which is detrimental to the habitat of spawning fish. Since 2011, one of the Aire River Trust’s goals has been to increase the connectivity of our river and its tributaries by removing or re-configuring weirs to allow fish passage. Following earlier work to install fish passes through and downstream of Leeds, significant steps towards this goal were made in 2022 with the successful construction of four fish passes as part of the DNAire project.

When we see water flowing over weirs, creating the sounds of waterfalls and visually pleasing white waters, it is easy to forget their man-made heritage and artificiality. It is hard to imagine seeing through the eyes of a migrating trout or salmon; every cell in its body instinctively directing it upstream to spawn, using both the stars and the earth's magnetic field for navigation and then facing an unpassable wall of Yorkshire-dressed stone. It is often not just the height of the weir that presents the issue but the combination of weir height and the shallow depth of the concrete sill below the weir. The height at which salmon and trout jump is directly affected by the relative depth of the water at the foot of the barrier and the “hydraulic jump,” which boosts their leap.

The Environment Agency (EA) has identified around four hundred river obstacles within the Aire Catchment. However, we believe there to be many more. For example, the EA recorded two barriers to fish passage on Pitty Beck, yet on our Bradford Becks Walkovers, we found 11. This pattern is most likely repeated on each beck.  Currently, tackling the removal of every weir in the catchment is unattainable. So, how did we prioritise them into a workable top twenty?

Data analysis with a Salmon splash of professional opinion

With help from The Rivers Trust, we are the first regional rivers trust to code an ArcGIS tool to accurately calculate the length of a river (including tributaries and forks) that would be opened and re-connected by the removal of every mapped weir in the Aire Catchment. Alongside this, we analysed ecological assessment data, invertebrate biodiversity, local community data (including deprivation), and weir visibility to the public. We assigned a score to each outcome and designed a weighted decision-making matrix that identified the weirs that scored the most highly. The data only tells us half the story, so we took our results to our expert team and discussed those weirs for which a solution in the short(ish) term might be feasible.

Once we had twenty feasible weirs, it was time to ground truth our ideas. The purpose of site visits is to add or, more often, diminish our confidence in the feasibility of the weir so that we only carry the most achievable sites to the next stage. We evaluated the weirs’ condition, site access, utility services or abstraction points, and landowner engagement by photographing and recording the area, our thoughts, and encounters.

The most surprising discovery for me was the actual size of a weir. After months of viewing photographs without visual perspective, weirs can appear to be half the scale of the real-life structure. Take a moment to analyse this photo: how tall do you believe it to be? See the very bottom of the blog for the upside-down answer.






(Tr)outcomes

We are fast approaching the end of the site visits and write-up stage. It is time to narrow our shortlist of twenty weirs down to four. So, it will be back around the table for our professionals to decide on the four “leak” proof projects to invest in. These four weirs will be subject to a comprehensive feasibility study and design process. I hope my next blog post will include more designs, machinery, hard hats and re-naturalised rivers.







Enforcement Undertakings

An Enforcement Undertaking is one of several regulatory options available to the Environment Agency when they are considering action against a polluter.

Once agreed, it requires the polluter to admit their offence and to pay an agreed (with the EA) sum to an appropriate charity - which must then spend it on environmental improvements.

We do not believe this is a route with fewer consequences for polluters than paying a fine for a pollution offence. Just like a fine, the offender has to publically admit their guilt and the size of the sum paid to the charity is intended to be of the same magnitude as a fine imposed by the courts. More importantly, any fines imposed by a court go straight to the government's general funds and will not be spent in a way that directly benefits the environment. Enforcement Undertakings offer a way to improve the watercourses affected by pollution. Enforcement Undertakings are in addition to any costs that polluters are compelled to pay to rectify the harm caused by their pollution.

Our Trust has decided that we will be prepared to work with polluters should they wish to offer an Enforcement Undertaking to the Environment Agency. Our catchment has benefited from several Enforcement Undertakings in recent years, which are currently funding river restoration projects run by the Aire Rivers Trust.

You can read the guidelines used by the Environment Agency for deciding whether or not to accept an offer of an Enforcement Undertaking here - how we decide whether to accept an EU for less serious offending.

It should be noted that the charity receiving the funds plays no role in the legal process for determining whether or not an enforcement undertaking is an appropriate course of action.

An enforcement undertaking can be offered only by the polluter. The offer can be made proactively, when they realise that they have caused significant pollution, or reactively, when the Environment Agency interviews them and points out the availability of an EU as an enforcement option. Proactive offers are generally viewed more favourably by the Environment Agency.

The Environment Agency periodically publish a list of Enforcement Undertaking that they have accepted.

If you are unfortunate enough to have caused pollution and would like to talk to us about a possible Enforcement Undertaking, please contact us.

How do we fix our rivers?

The ongoing pollution of our rivers by sewage is a topic of great concern, as are the roughly equal contributions of agriculture and urban runoff. Well done to Fergal Sharkey,  Wildfish, The Rivers Trust and others for shouting from the rooftops and for highlighting the issue and finally getting it firmly on the agenda of government and regulators. The time has come to work with everyone involved to develop practical, affordable solutions to a growing challenge. We need to understand the issues and work together if we are to fix our rivers.

So this piece is not an apologia for the water companies, nor the Environment Agency, nor Ofwat, nor government – all of whom have some responsibility to bear for the current situation. More, it is an attempt to stimulate a broader understanding of, and a discussion about the solutions to, what is now accepted by everyone as a significant problem. Nor is it a detailed technical analysis, it is a set of observations based on nearly 50 years working in the water sector in various guises. You should also note that although the water companies abstract, treat and deliver our drinking water this issue is not going to be addressed in this piece, other than by comparing the regulatory environment for drinking water with that for sewage treatment - there are glaring differences.

I am going to talk about four issues:

The source of the problem

Obviously it is more sewage than our systems can cope with, that much is commonly accepted. What is far from clear is whether the problem is actually worse and, if so, how much worse, than 10 or 20 years ago before the lobbyists and the media got the issue onto a wider agenda.

Since Victorian times, our sewerage and sewage treatment systems have recognised that when it rains the flow in the sewers increases until it reaches a point where the sewers (which were substantially over-designed by Victorian engineers who did not have the constraints of today’s engineers) cannot cope. In order to avoid flooding our streets, houses and sewage works the excess flow is discharged into rivers -which, at least in theory, will themselves have risen by then and able to accept the diluted sewage with no long term ill effect. The circumstances (flow rates) at which those discharges occur were set, and then engineering designed, using the best knowledge and expectations of the day. So discharges from sewers and sewage works are far from new.

These were days when the public, rightly or wrongly, trusted scientists and engineers to make the right decisions on behalf of society. But things have changed. ‘Back in the day’ many of our rivers were so polluted that few people would dream of swimming in them; the conditions attached to consents to discharge treated sewage were designed with river ecology in mind, not bacteriological contamination; the chemicals associated with things like nonstick pans, fireproof carpets and sofas etc did not even exist, we did not put wet wipes down the toilet (they didn’t exist) but it and we recycled our milk bottles because we didn't have plastics to use in their place. It was a different time with different technology and different societal expectations. What was known and what was acceptable then has changed.

Has the size of sewers and sewage works kept up with the growth of populations? I don’t know, but I do know that ‘we’ used to design them for expected populations many years ahead. That led to an interesting paradox. Those systems effectively ‘over-performed’ because in their early days they were under loaded. As the load on the sewers and sewage works increased, the performance would deteriorate until it reached the design criteria.

I would argue that something much more significant has changed, namely public expectations. When I started my career in the environmental sector 50 years ago, it was a niche topic talked about and acted on by a handful of interested specialists. Over the last 25 years, many aspects of the environment have become mainstream issues and society's expectations have increased substantially. What was acceptable in 1973 his certainly not in 2023. The publication of sewer overflow data and the pretty(?) maps showing the scale of the issue has brought this to the attention of the public. The acknowledged problems, allegedly largely to do with chicken farming, on the Wye have been well publicised, and the problems on Feargal Sharkey’s beloved chalk streams are real and of concern albeit not generalisable in the way he has done. Nonetheless, all of these examples hit the media with increasing frequency and raise the public’s awareness and concern, legitimate or otherwise, about our rivers. No surprise then that what was considered acceptable, perhaps even best practice, in Victorian times or even 20 years ago will no longer meet public expectations

Regulation

There does appear to be a growing recognition that, apart from anything else, there has been a major failure of regulation that has made a significant contribution so where we are now. So how does regulation of the water industry (not) work?

Every five years the industry basically does a deal, known as the Periodic Review (of prices) that sets the maximum amount the companies can charge customers in exchange for delivering a long series of maintenance requirements and improvements (known as AMP/WINEP[1]) to the environment. The calculations also involve setting a rate of return on investment for shareholders; if you put your money in the bank then you expect some interest back on it, consider dividends (as either a shareholder or a loan provider) to be the equivalent of that interest. The environmental improvements required are ultimately dictated by the Environment Agency, although they themselves receive ‘guidance’ from Defra about those requirements in the light of early estimates of the potential cost. So Government has their fingers in the pie from the very beginning.

I have been involved, to a greater or lesser degree, in all 8 Periodic Reviews to date and recall that on every occasion the EA wanted to do more and the Companies wanted to do more than Defra/Ofwat would allow. Indeed the customer ‘Willingness to pay’ surveys conducted as part of the PR process generally showed that customers were prepared to pay more for these improvements. I recall, back when I was negotiating the water quality requirements for the 1999 Periodic Review, trying to persuade Defra and the regulators to commit more investment to sewer overflows – we knew back then that there was an emerging problem. But no, they either could not or would not understand the issue and were certainly not willing to allow for expenditure on them while there were other more pressing problems to deal with.

Let’s remember that, whatever it might say in the legal documents that created it, Ofwat’s primary focus has always been on keeping bills low and the Environment Agency has been a puppet of government rather than the brave voice for the environment that we all welcomed when it was set up. The arm of the EA responsible for environmental protection has been stripped bare by cut after cut after cut and whilst there are good people doing their best working in the EA they are demoralised by the lack of resources to do the job they want to do.

Without good regulation, any organisation is likely to skip around the edges of the rules potentially leading to bigger and bigger problems – remember the banking collapse?!

The answer? Re-fund the EA with a clear brief to be the voice of the environment, enable them to overtly criticise Government when they take small or large actions to the detriment of the environment; equip them with resources to properly monitor the state of our rivers and the discharges into them. It is a fact that the data underpinning the quality designations of many of our rivers is miserably poor in quantity, and it’s those designations that ultimately drive investment.

And this is where I want to make a brief passing reference to drinking water. That side of the water industry is regulated by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, a body with around 50 employees, has a key role in ensuring that our drinking water is safe. They operate a self-monitoring regime  (yes, the companies take and analyse their own samples) which as never been subject to question and which has underpinned a dramatic improvement in the quality of our water for many years. The quality of our tapwater is rarely questioned,, so what can we on the ‘dirty’ side of the business learn from how DWI operates and the culture that underlies that continuous improvement in the quality of tapwater since privatisation?

Solutions

Reading my Twitter feed, and following this whole saga for the last couple of years, I see that the proponents in current court cases are asking for, no ‘demanding’, an ‘immediate’ halt to discharges. They are misleading their supporters. With all of my 50 years’ experience, I cannot think of a way to stop these discharges ‘immediately’. Their supporters face disappointment even if the judges find in their favour. I read irresponsible talk from those who propose to ‘block the pipes’ – what will that achieve other than flooding sewage into ‘Mrs Jones’ house and I can’t imagine that helping their cause.

I don’t propose to delineate a technical resolution here, just to note that there are solutions, both traditional (lots of concrete!) and more interesting and novel such as nature-based approaches but these cannot be delivered overnight, and it’s only fair to point out that they do not come for free.

These solutions can, and should, take account of all of the pressures and opportunities in a river catchment, Integrated Catchment Management is not a new idea but one which seeks a re-birth and more support from regulators and government. Good NBS can help address multiple issues (remember at the top I spoke about the triple pressures on our rivers – agriculture, urban runoff and sewage?). Just imagine what we could achieve if the parties responsible for various sources of pollution came together with environmentalists to seek the best overall solution for the catchment. I don’t believe in miracles, but I do believe that well co-ordinated collaborative action might get us close to one. Read more about the existing Catchment Based Approach here https://catchmentbasedapproach.org/

Financing and the ownership of water (companies)

If we start from the acceptance that, whatever the solutions are, they will need paying for then we inevitably come up against the question of who will pay. The headlines could lead us anywhere “stop Director’s bonuses”, “reduce director’s pay”, “stop paying dividends”, “shareholders must pay”, “we have paid for this already, we should not have to pay again”, “anyone but customers” are typical refrains – and I’m not going there, because it’s above my paygrade. As is the structure of the water sector, but I do have some thoughts on that which might inform your debate about this latter question.

Some of us can remember 1974, when treatment of water and sewage was taken out of the hands of the local authorities and placed with newly formed Water Authorities. In the hands of the local authorities these services had been the forgotten cousin and had received almost no investment and were almost entirely unregulated in practise. The water authorities were supposed to change this and, to some extent they did although they were not able to find the level of investment necessary to bring our rivers up to the emerging standards required at that time and, most specifically, by the various European directives coming into force. Eventually a combination of political ideology and a recognition of the potential cost of bringing things up to scratch led to privatisation, with the new water companies being able to raise finance in ways that were not possible to the old water authorities and would not show on the public sector borrowing requirement (which was as big an issue then as it is now).

Many would argue that the current model with water companies being commercial businesses who, like  many other businesses, operate within and on the boundaries of strong regulation  has effectively failed. It is a truism that “regulators are always likely to be outwitted, if not captured, by the profit-driven businesses they are trying to curb”. There is a revolving door of staff between Ofwat and the water companies and let’s not forget that the Chairman of Ofwat for the last decade  was formerly the head honcho at Yorkshire and Anglian! We have seen this before with the banks, where everything was fine until it wasn’t and the final analysis declared a failure of regulation.
So what other models might we consider? The commercial model has failed, the nationalised model (in one form or another) was unable to finance the necessary improvements, so what next?

Welsh Water (Dwr Cyrmu) had a chequered history before it finally settled as a not-for-profit company financed by debt and retained surpluses/profits. It has no shareholders and is run for public benefit.
Liv Garfield has recently proposed what might be a new form of company along similar lines.
A recent article in the FT offers helpful insights into the challenges and anything written by Dieter Helm on this topic is well worth reading.
Whilst water IS, inevitably, a regional monopoly and probably not suited to a full-scale for-profit model, the one thing on which all commentators except the political idealogues agree is that re-nationalisation would not help solve the problem.

Geoff Roberts has worked on improving the rivers of Yorkshire, and the Aire in particular, since he started with Yorkshire Water in 1974 where he rose “not quite to board level” representing the company with EA, DWI, HSE and had the ‘environment’ brief for the Kelda Group (YW’s parent company). More recently he has been a trustee of The Aire Rivers Trust sine 2013 and Chairman of the Trust for the last six years. He is passionate about getting our communities to love their rivers again.

[1] Asset Management Plan/Water Industry National Environment Programme

Plastics in our rivers

Plastic pollution in rivers is a major environmental problem that affects not only the health of rivers and the ecosystems they support, but also the health and well-being of humans. In this blog, we'll explore some of the causes of plastic pollution in rivers, the impacts it has on the environment and human health, and what we can do to reduce it.
In a subsequent blog, we will look specifically at microplastics.

Slightly ironic how this trash collector (in Baltimore, US) creates a fish tail as it works...

One of the main causes of plastic pollution in rivers is the improper disposal of plastic waste. Many people simply toss their plastic trash into the streets or into nearby waterways, where it can be carried by stormwater runoff into rivers. In addition, plastic that is not properly recycled can also end up in rivers through the waste management process.

The impacts of plastic pollution in rivers are significant and wide-reaching. For one, plastic in rivers can harm and kill wildlife that mistake it for food or become entangled in it. Fish, birds, and other animals can ingest plastic particles, which can lead to malnutrition, organ damage, and even death. In addition, plastic in rivers can also absorb toxins from the water, which can be harmful to both humans and animals when ingested.

Plastic pollution in rivers can also have economic consequences. For example, plastic pollution can damage fishing gear and boats, leading to losses for fishing and tourism industries. In addition, plastic pollution can also affect water quality, making it unfit for human consumption and recreation.

What can we do about the problem?
So, what can we do to reduce plastic pollution in rivers? One effective strategy is to properly dispose of plastic waste and ensure that it is properly recycled. This includes properly disposing of plastic items such as bottles, bags, and packaging in designated recycling bins and participating in community recycling programs.

Another important strategy is to reduce our overall consumption of single-use plastic items, such as straws and plastic water bottles. By using reusable items instead, we can significantly reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in our rivers and other waterways.

We can also support businesses and organizations that are working to reduce plastic pollution in rivers. For example, we can choose to patronize companies that use environmentally friendly packaging and support initiatives that work to clean up plastic pollution in rivers.

Finally, it's important to educate others about the issue of plastic pollution in rivers and the steps we can all take to reduce it. By raising awareness about the problem and the actions we can take to address it, we can create a ripple effect that will help to protect our rivers and the ecosystems they support for generations to come.

In conclusion, plastic pollution in rivers is a serious environmental issue that has wide-reaching impacts on both the environment and human health. By properly disposing of plastic waste, reducing our consumption of single-use plastic items, supporting businesses and organizations that are working to reduce plastic pollution, and educating others about the issue, we can all play a role in protecting our rivers and the ecosystems they support.

If you would like to dig further into the plastics in our environment, then Earthwatch have some excellent online resources.

Revitalising the River Aire to pre-industrial glory

How do Rivers Trusts undertake large scale river restoration projects to revitalise our urban rivers?

By working together central government and local charities can creatively access funding for river restoration.

Our Chair of Trustees, Geoff Roberts, explores the lessons learned in the development of our DNAire partnership project in a guest blog with the Environment Agency.

The project first took shape when Martin Slater (then Environment Agency Environment, Planning and Engagement Manager for Yorkshire Area) and I bumped into each other at a copying machine back in 2016, but little did we know we were conceiving a project that would consume us for the next few years.

GEOFF ROBERTS, REVITALISING THE RIVER AIRE TO PRE-INDUSTRIAL GLORY
Read Geoff's guest blog with the Environment Agency here

How clean is our river?

How clean is the River Aire?

Overall WQ classification - 2016 below and 2019 above

Every six years, the Environment Agency publish data showing the state of our rivers relative to the standards required by the Water Framework Directive (which has been transcribed into UK law post-Brexit). This blog explores behind the headlines that caused outrage when the results were first published and led to a stinging blog by myself and reveals a very different picture to that which might be imagined if you only read headlines. In fact, the River Aire is improving - not a lot, but significantly.

Does it pass or does it fail - both!

My headline is not that all rivers fail, but that the Aire has improved in many ways. Whether it passes or fails depends upon what data you use and how you look at that data. It's not a simple story, so settle back and read on...

I started work as a Pollution Prevention Officer on 1st July 1974 and have been involved, one way or another, with our river ever since and you might think, from the headlines, that all of the money, time and thought that has been put into improving the River Aire over the 45 years in which I have been involved has been wasted. That's not true - so here is my interpretation of way over 250,000 individual 'analyses' done by the EA on the River Aire in the last three years. In order to do that, and to make what is happening understandable, I need to look at three key issues:
1) The 'one out, all out' rule
2) Ecological data
3) Chemical data

One out, all out

According to the ‘one out all out’ principle of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) good status of a water body is reached if all parameters (aka analyses) are classed as good. Missing one single parameter is sufficient to downgrade all of them. Essentially, if they analyse for 50 different chemicals and one fails then the whole river fails regardless of how good the other aspects of river chemistry are. Think about this. The more chemicals you analyse for, the more chance of the river failing regardless of whether there has actually been a deterioration and if you suddenly decide to analyse for a 51st chemical then the risk of failure increases even though the quality might not actually have changed. Well, this is what happened.
Whilst this might be considered as an application of the precautionary principle, the approach has several disadvantages. With such a principle, the classification obtained does not reflect any partial progress made, especially on the reduction of significant pressures. In some cases, parameters such as hydromorphological and physicochemical elements may better reflect changes in the water status while biological parameters are used to reflect the status of the whole ecosystem.
Moreover, it is subject to quirks such as introducing new parameters into the mix (such as Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers - PBDEs, mentioned below) and thus increasing the chances of failure regardless of whether there has actually been any change. This is what happened to cause all waterbodies to fail for chemical status. See below for more detail.

Ecological Quality

Let's look at the ecological data first - after all this is the good news relating to data about the fish, invertebrates, plants etc in the river. They just 'sense' the state of the river without bothering about pesky EU Directives - remember that we have salmon below Leeds waiting to find their way upstream to spawn and the middle/upper Aire is a strong trout and grayling fishery. They don't do very well in failing rivers!

There is still some way to go, but steady progress is being made and many (most?) of the 'Moderate' classifications would be better were it not for the actions of our predecessor generations who thought they were doing right but weren't. Many are Moderate because they have been designated as 'Heavily Modified' because they were canalised, culverted, had weirs installed, straightened, had stone or concrete walls put in place and so on, so they are no longer natural in appearance or function. Much of this damage to the natural state of our rivers will take generations to resolve and may never be done - how, for example, do you de-culvert Bradford Beck when it runs underneath some of the most iconic buildings in the centre of Bradford or the River Aire running beneath Leeds City railway station?

Chemical Quality

Now let's look at the chemistry. The EA analyse for a very wide range of substances, from Dissolved Oxygen through Biochemical Oxygen Demand (the amount of degradable material in the water - often from sewage) to some real 'exotics' such as Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers PBDEs - we will come back to these shortly. According to this data not one single waterbody passes! This is the data that caused all the fuss and it needs to be taken in context and the reasons for the mass failure understood.

Looking wider, the picture is actually improving, and faster than for the ecology. This chart shows the percentage of all the individual tests that passed the relevant limits for each of three years.

Chart showing % of individual chemical analyses passing WTD water quality standards
% of individual chemical analyses passing WTD water quality standards

Again, there is still some way to go, but progress is being made.
Planned (and financed!) improvements to Phosphate and Ammonia discharges by Yorkshire Water will help substantially and we expect this to be significantly better in 5 years' time.

What's causing the failures?

So what happened to the chemistry of our rivers? Simple really - the EA started to analyse for a couple of exotic, yet ubiquitous, organic chemicals and found them everywhere (after all, they are ubiquitous!). PBDEs and something called Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS for short). They also changed their method for looking for Mercury and found it to be more widespread than first imagined.
Horror, you might think! Well, maybe not. These chemicals have been in our environment for decades,

PBDEs for instance have been used as flame retardants in a wide range of products including electrical and electronic equipment, textiles and foams. Releases occur during use and disposal of these products and they continue to enter waste water treatment works. They may be present in soil as a result of the spreading of sludge to land. PBDEs may also be released into the water column by the re-suspension of contaminated sediment or the transformation of decaBDE, which is still in use in industrial products. They may also volatilize and be deposited aerially.

PFOS has been used in a range of domestic consumer products, as well as in industrial processes and in aqueous film forming foams used in fire-fighting. Older consumer products such as carpets, textiles and upholstery that have been treated with PFOS or related substances will continue to act as a source of PFOS. Emissions can occur during the use, washing and disposal of such items, entering the environment via waste water treatment works, urban runoff or waste management facilities. PFOS can be present in soil from historical sources or from the spreading of sewage sludge to land.

And finally Mercury, which has been used in electrical equipment such as thermostats and batteries, cosmetics, wood preservatives, textile treatment agents, dental fillings, measurement devices and as an antifouling agent on boat hulls. A major use of mercury has been in mercury amalgam dental fillings, although this is now declining. Atmospheric releases of mercury are significantly greater than direct emissions to water, with thermal power plants and combustion installations being the largest industrial source emitters. Aerial deposition originating from outside the UK is now a significant source of mercury.

All three of these substances are now controlled (and substantially banned) internationally and are so ubiquitous and persistent that it is expected that they could be around for at least another decade. Realistically, there is little that a Rivers Trust or indeed the EA can do to further reduce these chemicals unless we find a point source discharge (we are checking, just in case).

Want the raw data?

If you want to look at the raw data yourself, you need to be looking here for chemical data and here for ecological data. Be warned - it's a very clunky process and you will end up with huge quantitites of data in spreadsheet format. But if you persevere and are handy with Excel then it's intriguing stuff.
This blog has opened the curtains and seen that things are better than might have been imagined. If you want to go a layer deeper in understanding the data and/or how the classification system works then do contact us.

Conclusion

Contrary to what the headlines might have suggested, the River Aire is actually improving for both chemical and ecological standards.
There is some way to go yet, but we have to be heartened by the fact that we have such a good existing fish population and by the plans of Yorkshire Water to spend large sums to further improve the situation.
Not that we will rest on any laurels - there is work to do and The Aire Rivers Trust plans to be at the forefront of pushing for and delivering the necessary improvements.

Glossary

Hydromorphological?

Hydromorphology is a term used in river basin management to describe the hydrological (water flow, energy etc) and geomorphological (surface features) processes and attributes of rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) dictates that the ecology of surface waters is protected by correctly managing their hydrology and geomorphology.

Hydromorphology assessment and prediction requires an evaluation of aquatic habitat composition and the dynamic nature of water bodies and facilitates sustainable restoration.

Physicochemical?

The physicochemical status of a waterbody is linked to a series of measurments of the physical condition - Temperature for instance - and the basic chemistry - Ammonia, Phosphate, pH, BOD etc...

Dissolved Oxygen

This is the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. All life needs oxygen, so this is an indicator of the ability to support life.
It is typically about 10 milligrams per litre, but the maiximum depends on the temperature of the water (the hotter it gets, the less oxygen the water can carry and so the more stressed the biota become).

Biochemical Oxygen Demand

Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) represents the amount of oxygen consumed by bacteria and other microorganisms while they decompose organic matter under aerobic (oxygen is present) conditions at a specified temperature. The lower the better as high levels (above 5?) suggest pollution.

Leadership in a Rivers Trust

Conducting an orchestra
Leading a rivers trust is like conducting an orchestra

Some readers may be aware that as well as being Chairman of The Aire Rivers Trust, I am also a specialist in organisational/personal development and leadership (that’s what earned me money for 30 years and what still occasionally contributes to the bank account). So I read this article from Harvard Business Review with increasing recognition of its relevance in the charity sector, including Rivers Trusts. It’s ostensibly about leadership in professional services firms, typical in the accountancy, legal and other consulting fields. So what’s the relevance to our areas of interest?

Well, I submit that in many ways  we operate on the same basis as those organisations. I have been a trustee of  3 charities and recognise that they are typically reliant on volunteers, sometimes at both grassroots and board level, those volunteers do what they do because they like it, we have to motivate them through their intrinsic drivers not those of the trust. Many senior volunteers bring specialist skills upon which the trust comes to rely. In 'managing' those voluunteers, we cannot rely on traditional hierarchical power structures, we quite often have a few highly opinionated individuals as part of the team, we often have people who are not willing to be led nor do they want to lead (they just want to get on with what they are doing)…  To quote the article

"...leadership is a collective, not an individual, endeavor, created through interactions among powerful peers."

So how do we lead in such an environment? That is where the article rang so many bells. Their prescription seems quite a good fit for us. I have quoted it below, and you will see the need for a little ‘translation’

Guiding Principles for Leading in a Professional Service Firm

Focus first on the fundamentals.

Your peers will accept you as a leader only if they recognize that you’re at least as good at their job as they are. (This is what the article said, my personal proposition is slightly different - that you must be at least as good at your job as they are at theirs - and they must understand the difference between the jobs.) You need to establish a reputation for doing and winning outstanding work early on in your career. Once you’re in a senior leadership role, don’t become so immersed in it that you neglect to keep bringing in new business.

Hone your political skills.

Understand the subtleties of organizational politics—don’t assume that colleagues who do it well are not to be trusted. Think about the last time someone changed your mind about an important issue. What did that person say and do? Then think about what you did and didn’t do the last time you failed to get something you wanted. Strategically influencing others doesn’t make you insincere; it’s just common sense.

Take time to build consensus, but be ready to assert control.

If you have a strong vision, you may be in a hurry to implement it. Don’t be. You’ll need to win over competing interests, listen respectfully to objections, and give way to some demands (to prove that you’re listening). Remain patiently on the sidelines while your colleagues exercise their prerogative to “mess things up,” because they’ll ultimately do better if they learn things for themselves. But you also have to take control at the right time, or colleagues will complain of a leadership vacuum.

Be ambitious for your firm (and for yourself).

Your enthusiasm and concern for the firm must be perceived as genuine, regardless of the extent of your personal ambition. Make your peers believe that you care as much about their interests as your own.

Know when to be a good “follower.”

There will never come a time when you can safely stop stroking your colleagues’ egos. The higher you rise, the harder you will have to work to convince people you haven’t got “above” yourself. As a leader of a professional service firm you should aspire to be a few steps ahead of your fellow partners but also be able to judge when to step back and show you are prepared to follow the will of the partnership.

I happen to be currently interested in the political skills (note the small ‘p’, large ‘P’ stuff is best left to others imho) associated with being a leader in a trust. In our reliance on grant income, we need to influence widely and anyone involved in influencing is involved in politics. In my next blog, I will explore one way of looking at ‘office politics’ in a positive light and starting to understand how to be more effective.

Swimming in our rivers?

River Wharfe below Ilkley

'Free swimming', aka swimming in rivers, lakes and the sea, is gaining is popularity. With the recent publication of a consultation on designating the Wharfe as a bathing water, now seems to be a good time to offer an opinion piece on this thorny issue. This will be a data-free zone, yet one based on many years' experience dealing with bathing water issues since the original Bathing Waters Directive came into force in 1975. This piece is the personal opinion of the author and is not intended to suggest that it is the policy or opinion of the Trust.


When the original Directive came into force, the predecessors of Defra went to great lengths to minimise the number of designations. Inland waters were excluded and the criteria applied to coastal waters were so strict that only a very few were granted bathing water status. Moreover, they decided that only the minimum standards in the Directive needed to be applied.
The EU's Bathing Waters page offers a wealth of information on the current state of bathing waters around Europe (incuding the UK as the data were collected before Brexit). The UK currently has 644 designations, compare to the extremes of 3348 in France and 17 in Luxembourg. Unlike in the UK, many countries in the EU have designated many inland waters. Doing so in the UK would represent a major change in policy with long-lasting and complex implications, both practical and economic.
This piece explores some of those implications, albeit briefly.

Early experience of complications or it's not just about sewage

The prevailing mindset when standards were first introduced was that they could be met by effective sewage treatment and/or piping effluents well out to sea beyond the possibility that they could influence bathing waters (which were generally just the few metres between high tides and into the sea at low tide). Before long, we were examining tidal flow patterns around bays and along the length opf the coast, then exploring the impact of combined sewer overflows, then misconnections into allegedly clean watercourses dischargeing onto the beach, then urban runoff, then dogs and birds defecating on the beach....
I mention these complications only to help the reader understand that meeting the standards was not as simple as it might have first appeared and that a whole lot of unexpected factors significantly delayed compliance. How might similar factors play out in the case of the Wharfe at Ilkley, or indeed any other inland water? Upstream of any sampling point on rivers are likely to be several other sewage works, a host of (generally poorly maintained) private treatment plants or septic tanks, runoff from both urban and rural roadways, field runoff containg cow/pig/sheep/chicken etc faeces, any of which could carry a substantial load of coliforms and/or enterococci.

Practicalities and economics

What might meeting the standards involve? For the sake of this blog, let's just consider sewage discharges from water company assets - Combined Sewer Overflows (intermittent discharges, theoretically only after heavy rain) and Sewage Treatment works (continuous discharges). At the moment there are no bacteriological standards on these discharges and the introduction of them would inevitably lead to the need to disinfect such discharges. In order to be able to reliably disinfect, they would almost certainly need treating to a higher standard than at present (no bad thing, but in this case technically necessary to enable disinfection). I am, of course, assuming that disinfection would be by way of UV treatment, as any chemical option would be likley to lead to disinfection byproducts unlikely to be acceptable in the receiving watercourse.
For CSOs "treating to a higher standard" is likely to first mean drastically reducing the permissible discharge to river - which of course is one of the campaigners' wishes (not that it would not be welcomed by most people interested in improving water quality). But what then? CSOs do not typically have any treatment other than screening out physical debris (this could certainly be improved but it wouldn't render the deischarges disinfected). But we still have a discharge containing substantial bacteriological load, and not only from sewage but also from runoff, so what next? I don't know - do you? Perhpas we could delay the discharge until such time as the river genuinely has risen (that was the original concept behid CSOs after all) to a level where people could not realistically swim in it anyway? All of this would require significantly more sewage to be passed forward to the treatment works - and hence upgrading sewers and then additional treatment capacity at the works.
So here we are at the, now significantly bigger, sewage works. A works whose operating range has increased from a volume ranging from 1 unit to 6 units and now has to treat a range from 1 to ??? units. Now there's an interesting challenge. Any process engineer will tell you that designing a system gets harder, and more expensive, as the range of operation increases. And that bigger works will need to treat sewage to a much higher standard, typically referred to as tertiary treatment, in order that disinfection can work.

So what's the challenge?

Now all of this is technically possible, so what's the challenge? Easy - money. All this has to be paid for, and who do you think will pay for it? Yes, us customers. OK, the arguments will now come out about the 'rip-off profits' of the water companies and how the owners should pay - but anyone with even a simple understanding of financing understands that owners invest in the companies and deserve a return on their investment (if they don't get one why should they invest?) and that whilst they could be financed by borrowing, that needs to have interest paid on it and be paid off as well. And please, no arguments about re-nationalisation - this is not the place for that.

Is it worth it?

So we (whoever 'we' is) spend all this money on sewers and sewage works, will it result in 'Rivers fit to Swim in'? My prediction is 'NO'. No for the reasons I have mentioned - private sewage treatment systems, urban and rural runoff etc.

Please do contribute to the discussion. Knowing how sensitive this issue is I reserve the right to moderate comments.

A new era in catchment management

Integrated catchment management on the Aire is about to take a new leap forward.

Just a year after the creation of The Aire Catchment Network, we are delighted to announce the appointment of Billy Coburn our new, full time, Catchment Officer for the River Aire. Billy comes to us from Thames21 with valuable expertise across the range of catchment host activities and will lead all of our catchment hosting activity.
Starting on 1st September, he will be working with an ever-increasing range of stakeholders in the Aire to help deliver our vision of:

"A gold standard example of the recovery of a post-industrial river"

They key roles of the post and the areas where we plan to make a difference, are:

You can contact Billy on billy.coburn@aireriverstrust.org.uk

This appointment comes courtesy of funding from Yorkshire Water and The Environment Agency

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