Fighting for Welsh Rivers, holding to account those who legislate, regulate and pollute. We are a voluntary citizen funded organisation. Contact info
@wru
.org.uk
Important 2024 dates here to attend an online session with our National Evironmental Regulator
@NatResWales
Board.
Ask a question, give a view on your patch, scrutinise their performance, hold the board to account.
Major pollution incident on the Taff at Pontypridd.
A known reported problem over years, a main sewer finally bursts & now pours raw sewage, pharma, & PFAS into the river.
Negligence, ineptitude or bonus payments at stake? Anyone got a spare “what if” function?
@ygcrebelmams
And there we have it, finally
@1GarethWynJones
welcoming/cheerleading the man whose political values have trashed his business, his home nature & his culture.
It's clear, click bait is more important now to this ex “farmer”
#utterdisgrace
Here is an image of the state of our rivers in Wales. Combined Sewer Outflows. That's right Sewage entering our rivers. Beware anglers, canoeists, swimmers, walkers.
Let's get the detail in the open for communities to know.
@IoloWilliams2
@CPRW_UK
@WGEnviroAgri
@Feargal_Sharkey
"Demand for water will outstrip supply say water companies."
The next crisis facing the water industry is right there, we are running out of water & I hear that WC's regional water plans aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Why am I not surprised.
In the 🏴 Tâf catchment we no longer have fish kills cos there are NO FISH.
Standard MO for intensive dairy that
@NatResWales
ignore. The Tâf catchment isn't a sexy one. Sacrificial lamb to placate farming lobby.
@AndrewRTDavies
lot.
What you say?
@WGRural
@WGClimateChange
"It is understood the water had become polluted due to slurry being sprayed on nearby fields running into the water. A three kilometre stretch of the river... was affected."
What was
@thetimes
saying this morning about farming and slurry?
#CleanItUp
#Sewage
was dumped into the River Mole, which runs through
#EsherAndWalton
, 220 times last year. It's happening again today.
The Government is doing nothing. The water companies are getting away with it. That's why I'm campaigning for the
#SewageScandal
to stop. 👇
@GeorgeMonbiot
A vision of an industrial processed food system owned by the “usual suspects” doesn’t inspire me.
Haven’t read your book yet but will shortly. Do you cover that issue?
To witness extinction of Salmon, Sewin, Trout in Wales don’t walk the main river stems, walk the tribs, streams, brooks, ditches.
Damage on an industrial scale. This is where they breed, just 5 months away.
NOTHING has changed in these slurry, maize, chemical laden nurseries!
Haha, who knew, Post Office crooked executive bonus payments after doing a Horlicks of a job?
#R4Today
Now what does that remind us of?
Just can't remember!
Oh yes these fine upstanding folk.
Though they do like to fund Rivers Trusts too. Awe bless them.
In Wales
@Feargal_Sharkey
we have the second worst water company
@DwrCymru
in the UK for pumping 💩,microplastics, pharmaceuticals,chemicals into our iconic rivers.
Collapsed biodiversity recorded over decades.
And our regulator does what?
@NatResWales
talk,talk,talk that’s what
"Filthy raw sewage 'flowing down street' of picture perfect Snowdonia village."
Yes, Wales is blighted with this as much as anywhere else.
And
@NatResWales
does what exactly?
And who was the SoS for the environment when she boasted of a 34,000 less farm inspections and an 80% reduction in advice to farmers (you know the custodians of the countryside)?
@trussliz
& her free market Tufton St chums
@iealondon
#environmentaldestruction
Massive thank you to everyone at
@GMB
for the opportunity this morning to highlighted the devastation being cause to our rivers and beaches by the water industry and a failed system of regulation. Indebted.
@ranvir01
@edballs
@Kevin_Maguire
@toryboypierce
Let’s be clear the need for Citizen Science to perform monitoring of our rivers is an admission of failure of our institutions. There are 100’s of rivers that no citizens are watching. The Tâf catchment for example. Citizens should be thriving in the environment not checking it!
Interesting piece by
@Channel4News
@clarefallon
on the state of our rivers
Shows the value of water monitoring by citizen science
Emphasises the critical need for tighter regulation by the EA
More inspections & stronger enforcement are needed
It seems that acidification is making an impact again in 🏴 in the upper Towy & Wye.
Given salmon numbers have literally fallen off a cliff in Wales you would think the word “emergency” would be in play more!
Any detail?
@NatResWales
@BenWilsNRW
@bettwsresident
@SteveOrmerod
Salmon numbers in free fall in so many UK rivers as fish struggle to survive in a slew of slurry, sewage, antibiotics, chemicals; fight their way over dams, search for food not killed by pesticides, seek cool shade, evade lice & disease from fish farms, & escape overfishing.
Care about rivers & biodiversity?
Then care how we farm.
Pic 1-The Trothy after rain a trib of the Wye
Pic 2-A stubble turnip field common throughout the catchment on a slope down to the Trothy.
Bye bye soil, salmon left this catchment 40 years ago
#potatoes
#turnip
#chemicals
@Feargal_Sharkey
Another example of the “what if” function missing.
We now as insurance payers pick up the bill for these poor folk while
@thameswater
repatriate ROLI ( that’s Return On Lack of Investment) money to Sovereign Wealth Funds in China, Abu Dhabi etc
💧Those who pollute our rivers will be held to account.
@YorkshireWater
breached its environmental permit with an unauthorised sewage discharge near Harrogate.
Completely Unacceptable.
🟰 £1 Million sanction
➕£1.85 Million sewer upgrade works as part of enforcement.
1/3
@Feargal_Sharkey
@HomesEngland
@BBCPM
The propaganda & excuses being exchanged in this space is staggering
The strategy to develop Cambs without a massive investment to manage water is just folly.
Even then it might be a nono
Classic UK strategy
ie None!
Here’s the result of the current “strategy” not 🚀🔬 is it!
Slight twist here
@AyoCaesar
@bbcquestiontime
Sovereign Wealth Funds own significant parts of the UK Water industry.
Eg.
@thameswater
is owned by the Chinese & Abu Dhabi State among others.
Can’t make it up.
“Your water bills are going towards making foreign corporations rich”
Ash Sarkar hits out at private water companies which spill sewage into waterways, adding it makes ‘financial sense’ to renationalise the water industry
#bbcqt
The worst thing about the Post Office story:
THEY KNEW!
The evidence of manure, slurry, nutrient & chemical abuse in the environment is in!
THEY KNEW!
Some Ag, farmers, political & state institutions CHOSE to ignore.
We now have the documented evidence!
@WATERSHED_i
let’s talk!
Another sordid chapter in of how the Wye - one of our most iconic rivers - has been allowed to die under a flood of chicken sh☠️t…
Our investigations reveal how intensive egg farms have drains running from their sheds direct into the river - down which the 💩 of 100s of 1,000s
Great to meet Clare Pillman of
@NatResWales
alongside Pete Gough (head of fisheries), with the North Wales & Welsh Dee Rivers Trust to talk about all the issues currently affecting our rivers, the work we are delivering & future funding opportunities
We once had the finest Seatrout /Sewin fishing in Europe! The magnificent Towy, Teifi, Cothi, Dovey etc
All collapsed!
Met many a Swede, German, Dutchy, American etc on their banks.
All gone!
Why?
#trashedrivers
by agriculture & sewage
🙊🙉🙈
The Usk has been spewing “foam” for days.
We suspect
@DwrCymru
sewage at Llanfoist Abergavenny.
Tell us it's not
@turdherder69
What's the Llanfoist EDM been doing?
@ManofWye
@EnvAgency
Hello good evening Mr Hickey,
Please report this incident to our 24-hour environmental incident report line on 0300 065 3000 where staff will be able to take details needed to look into the incident.
Many thanks.
So many questions to ask of the retail supply chain & the destruction caused by some of their primary producers especially dairy in Wales.
Happy to give senior supermarkets execs & buyers a tour of the destruction.
@waitrose
@Tesco
@sainsburys
@Morrisons
@AldiUK
A peep!
.
@waitrose
cheddar maker repeatedly polluting river..
If a farm is caught deliberately polluting a watercourse 3 times in a row, it should be shut down, not merely fined
@waitrose
- stop sponsoring ecocide & get your house in order
😡😡😡
After 10 yrs of failure this NMB talking shop likes to kid itself that they are making progress
Success in delivering an action is not the same as success as delivering an outcome
Public money for public failure spent on org's
Any comment on yr vote
@WUFoundation
@bettwsresident
It beggars belief that the same week we find out the
@EnvAgency
and
@NFUtweets
agreed a cosy loophole that allowed the unimpeded polluting of our rivers, the same actors vote 7-6 to take the Wye Catchment Nutrient Management Board out of the public eye:
The conversion of wild protein, herring, sand eels basically anything from our seas into pellets for this obscene salmon “farming” industry probably sums up our obsession with self destruction better that most.
West Africa fisheries & communities have been devasted.
"Baltic herring is on the verge of extinction. The problem, they say, is that almost all the herring in the waters near the coast are being scooped up by industrial trawlers so they can be ground up & fed to another famous Scandinavian fish: Norwegian farmed salmon"
@Bloomberg
Slurry and Storm Gerrit from our intensive dairy industry combine, just as Salmon and Sewin have bred.
You couldn't plan species extinction better!
@huw4ogmore
@cefincampbell
What a healthy river can look like. Wye 2018
The latest news, destructive pesticide neonicotinoids found in rivers!!!
Who knew?
If we put neonics on land it will end up in a river!!! 🚀🔬 🙄🤦♂️
The WI/IFTTT function seems to have gone AWOL with our environmental regulators.
Great reporting by
@Channel4News
again, exposing the utter incompetence of the government to address this. This is their policy (Privatised water companies) they were told this would happen 20 years ago. They ignored it then and then defunded the “mock” regulator.
@RiverActionUK
No
@SallyAnn1066
, you don't know what you voted for. There was ABSOLUTELY ZERO mention of banning sewage overnight, it was "progressive reductions" that you rejected.
Another Conservative MP peddling the party lie and her own constituents know it.
Fabulous, so we have a measure, a standard to demand for all of our chalkstream rivers
The only question now is:
How, what’s the plan, timescale & budget to deliver this
If this doesn't exist then it demonstrates a disingenuous relationship with government, regulators & polluters
Many people are blaming the water companies for this. Yes, they are doing terrible things to our rivers. But human sewage is only the second worst source of river pollution in the UK. The biggest is agriculture. The River Wye has been poisoned mainly by chicken farms.
The usual suspects in the farming dairy sector complaining (whinging) about the Welsh Government Clean Air Act.
Why don't they come up with proposals to solve and fund the problems they cause.
I can't imagine why, can you?
I know this tributary well it’s physically stunning & in an appalling ecological state
Unbridled destructive agriculture over many decades, from spuds, maize & stubble turnip
A collapsed salmonoid population completely ignored by our regulator
@NatResWales
Just look at the concern of all of the UK’s MP’s amassed in the mother of parliaments wanting to hold the minister to account for allowing
@wateruk
to dump💩, pharmaceutical, chemical & plastic laden loads into rivers.
Action anyone?
Or more hand-wringing
You are an intensive dairy business,
debted up to the eyeballs
Farm-gate milk price collapsing, production & slurry up, losses mounting.
Cost saving essential to survive.
What's the risk that rivers will take the hit?
Is our regulator
@NatResWales
alert to this?
@CommonsWelshAff
A great first episode.
@PaulWhitehouse
.
I say great, a tragedy really.
But the spirit of the fighters you met is uplifting.
So many brilliant people fighting and so few powerful polluters.
We must win this!
Yup here is an Usk version. On a slope, into Berthin brook that hasn't seen a run of breeding salmon for what? 30 years.
What do
@NatResWales
do?
Yep you got it, send a pdf of COGAP fiction.
So the seeds of destruction sown for 🏴 rivers, & 2025 year cohort of Atlantic Salmon & Sewin
@huw4ogmore
@cefincampbell
Step 1 - spray the hell out the catchment with Glyphosate.
Step 2. Plant maize “willy-nilly” for the intensive dairy industry.
Step 3. Ignore COGAP
@Feargal_Sharkey
@thameswater
The victorians planned & invested to see us through a century.
@WaterUK
companies “plan” to the next CEO bonus round.
I have seen this model throughout the private sector & it needs to be addressed by shareholders.
In this case THE REGULATOR (EA & NRW) need to. … … REGULATE 🤦🏼♂️
A broken agricultural economic system feeding river & biodiversity destruction in Wales.
Maize has been allowed to run riot in Wales, completely the wrong crop for our environment.
Rarely any consideration for COGAP to mitigate.
We reap what we sow.
#RapeOfTheFairCountry
again!
UK’s equivalent of palm oil. I’ll stick my neck out and say non-under-sown maize is probably the most environmentally damaging crop we currently grow in UK. The soil, and everything applied to it during the growing phase, ending up in our rivers. ☹️
In the first 31 days of this year, the SSRS recorded 2,884
#sewage
alerts in England and Wales. Water companies' investment clearly paying off... 👏
What an absolute shitshow. 🤬
Jeez
@BBCr4today
@BBCNews
“water companies are allowed to dump sewage into our rivers when it's raining”
NO NO NO
The rules say in “exceptional circumstances”
Please up you standards on reporting this utter disaster. Please!
Apologies for burdening you all at this time on a Sunday morning but it appears that
@BBCRadio4
and lots of my friends have been conspiring behind my back. :)
Thank you all so much for such generous, heart-warming and joyous comments. It's all incredibly embarrassing.
Big love
We have a memory of this quality of water only 30 years ago of the Wye, Usk, Towy, Teifi, Tâf, Dee. That’s why baselines of restoration need to be defined. Hey
@CommonsEAC
@WGClimateChange
it doesn’t start now. 1970 for us!
…why we campaign to save our rivers…
This is what an unpolluted river looks like: River Ribnik, Bosnia
No intensive agri
No sewage discharges
Treasured & nurtured
Highly protected
This is what the
#riverwye
looked like before
@AvaraFoods
@thenoblefoods
@Tesco
came along
'It's pretty damning for everyone involved'
@Feargal_Sharkey
A new report says water companies have been overly focused on maximising financial returns at the expense of the environment.
Recommendations include that bosses should not receive a bonus if the company pollutes.
A 👏👏👏thread 🧵 that demonstrates how broken our system is.
The CEO Peter Perry has just been “awarded” a £20k salary increase approved by the mysterious “members”.
Bonuses, throughout this period too!
Really?
@huw4ogmore
@DelythJewellAM
@LlyrGruffydd
@JFinchSaunders
Dŵr Cymru boss hits back at criticism that his organisation spilled raw, untreated sewage into the River Teifi over a 3 year period. The discharges were exposed in research by
@watervole3
. Prof Hammond described them as the 'worst he'd come across'
We genuinely don’t take a view on the wish to eat this stuff but we do take a view on what
@AvaraFoods
do with the ultra polluting phosphate laden manure. 20 years of environmental abuse and they are still in denial. The enviro regulator
@NatResWales
non-existent.
#wyedeath
Meet David, site manager at Chaffcombe Farm, Devonshire Poultry. 🐔 David has been able to make transformational changes to the health and welfare of his flocks with the help of Poultry Sense. Check out the video below to hear more 👇
#PoultryTechnology
Voices from a Welsh catchment, including our voice.
This one the once magnificent Teifi, a SAC/SSSI, Atlantic Salmon forecast to be extinct within a decade, Sewin not much far behind.
On our watch, our choices
@WGClimateChange
@huw4ogmore
@cefincampbell
Just don't do this on the Teifi, Usk, Taff & many other Welsh rivers as the amount of sewage & chemical dumping by
@DwrCymru
is some of the highest in the UK
for more detail.
@PublicHealthW
anyone checking e-coli levels in our rivers around popular places?
Entertaining the kids over
#Easter
needn’t cost the earth.
Visit your local woodland or National Nature Reserve for a day out that’s kind on your pocket.
Find walks and cycle trails for little legs, puzzle trails, play areas and ideas for nature play:
👉
The data analysed here for is between 2017 & 2019.
The years 20/21/22/23 anecdotally have been even worse with 24 lining up to be the worse still.
Does anyone else think that
@NatResWales
have no comprehension of what an emergency is?
Join the public board meeting on the 2nd Feb
Wild Salmon and sea-trout will be happy too.
And what was the scooping up of Sand-eels for?
The production of fish pellets for the appalling industrial Salmon farming!
£79Bn gone to “investors” like the states of China, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Singapore etc)
All the while using the assets & guaranteed income stream to leverage up a debt of £52Bn.
A brilliant rip-off for UK water bill payers.
That's you and me UK residents.
We are in the 4th decade of privatisation. What happened to all the cash? Dumping sewage in the environment remains spectacularly profitable. You slashed the
@EnvAgency
monitoring budget & allowed water companies to self-report sewage dumping. Catastrophic - all on your watch.
Really? “Unobstructed superhighway” for migratory species. Well, apart from the chemical cocktail that’s become a “hoover dam” for them. This gives the impression that the Wye is “nectar” to those who need to act. It’s dying. Call it out, please. Your voice counts.
Well done to the 37.1% of you who said the Wye!
Snaking through England and across the border to Wales, the River Wye provides an unobstructed fish super-highway for a number of migrating species including Salmon, Trout and Eels 🐟
This is important please retweet
@RiverActionUK
@Feargal_Sharkey
++
🧵.
@NatResWales
have cancelled the NRW Board Meeting Public Q&A session on Wednesday 13th. You can listen in & connect details beIow I would urge you to connect for just a few mins & leave a message in chat.
No, not unless our rivers are restored. They are near dead!
The economic value of say Wye, Usk, Towy, Teifi, Conway, Dovey Dee etc if they were producing the fish of the 1970’s.
Tens of million ££. Jobs, hospitality, better land management etc
Want to talk about it
@BBCWales
🧵 Starting to analyse the appalling situation of sewage/chemical pollution
How S’Wales is not described as an open sewer is beyond us.
Each blue dot is a raw sewage/chemical dump into a river or coast
Add pollution from “normal” effluent & it spells river & biodiversity death.
The collapse of the Atlantic salmon in the Wye, now tragically facing extinction, is just one of a number indicators of the ecological collapse of the UK’s 4th largest river system.
@theresecoffey
@DefraGovUK
since promising a “Plan for the Wye” - total silence
Where is it ⁉️
Listening to the media coverage on drought conditions and the reassuring messages they are being told by water companies 🤦♂️ about water being taken from ample groundwater sources not rivers. Really? Join the dots
@WaterUK
Ah a voice of reason rather than excuses on
@BBCr4today
this morning 🙏 Mr
@Feargal_Sharkey
succinct, accurate and clear, unlike our rivers and government MP’s.
River Teifi clean 3 completed, thanks to all the volunteers, this section was from Porth to bridge so only 500m. Shame to see what has been dumped in the river about 3 tonnes in this section taking us over 10 tones in 3km!!
@NatResWales
@wrurestore
@Feargal_Sharkey
#teifi
"Major salmon river under threat as agricultural pollution starves fish and plants of oxygen."
The River Faughan is where I caught my first trout as a kid using a fly rod and now the river's salmon are being killed by farm pollution. So, so sad.
The utter irony of this corporate message beggars belief!
@CommonsEAC
From
@thameswater
CEO.
You know the one that represents the interests of the Chinese State, Abu Dhabi State & various Canadian Pension funds. Not TW customers.
#shameful
Two of the most dangerous people in Britain for farming, environment & biodiversity.
They will sell UK farming to the USA, this will mean UK farming will follow the US intensive system to compete
All compacted into UK scale.
It will make the UK dairy disaster look child’s play.
@GrahamDenny9
@UKChange
Double the sentence.
Wilful entitled arrogant damage from the worst of farming.
The few brilliant farmers we have have their generic reputation trashed by such people.
There has been unprecedented rainfall and the land is water logged, but let’s spread slurry from the road (25.02.22) in a National Park, AONB, with local SSSI’s and nearby rivers/lakes just down the road!
@EnvAgency
@GeorgeMonbiot
@Alexander_Lees
@lakedistrictnpa
Crops and farming practices in Wales have changed so much these past 50 years to deliver intensification.
The legacy infrastructure doesn't help much.
Redesign required? How to fund it?
Have had a great week out with
@SwanseaUni
tagging Salmon smolts on the Wye for a study.
In its prime the Wye would’ve generated in excess of 1.8M smolts a year. What now? 80k?