The role of Colne Catchment Host has recently been taken on by Tony Booker, who explains here what he thinks the current issues and priorities are.

I have lived in or close to the Colne Valley for most of my life – fishing in its waters and helping to look after many of them for well over half a century. 

These days I hardly fish at all and actually prefer to spend my time on conservation projects and photography. But I am very aware of the huge positive impact anglers can have on natural habitats. 

In any given catchment they will manage huge areas – probably more than all the dedicated nature reserves put together and, in some cases, providing better and more diverse habitats. It is no surprise, therefore, that forward-thinking organisations like Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust are actively engaging with angling groups. 

When someone was needed to step up and help lead ColneCAN (our catchment action network) I couldn’t ignore it. There are many beneficial opportunities knocking (remember the programme? You see, I said I was old!) and we need to ensure we take them. There will be more news on these and our progress in the future but for now, just know that I am on the case.

The Current State of Rivers in the Colne Catchment

So, where are we currently with the state of our rivers, how do we move forward in a positive way and what are my opinions on all this?

The rivers in our catchment are generally suffering the same fate as others across the country – that is to say, given the criteria laid out in the Water Framework Directive, only 14% nationally meet good ecological status and none meet good chemical status. The Colne meets neither and won’t do so anytime soon. 

That is a damning indictment and belies the fact that many of our governing organisations will tell you that river health is improving. That is complete nonsense.

There was a place where I sat with my father on the banks of the Colne when I was six-years-old. I learned to swim there and we caught monster roach (well, they seemed like monsters to me back then, anyway) one after the other. It was idyllic and it remained that way into my teenage years. 

Today, that spot is blighted by a continuously polluting discharge point from the house next to it. The next house down has another. And so on, and so on. The river is in an appalling state and that is certainly not what I’d call any kind of ‘improvement’.  

ColneCAN is the Colne catchment partnership that delivers the Catchment Based Approach of river basin management and so, providing that partnership is effective, we have the ability to move forward positively. It is my job to ensure that happens.

Undertaking pennywort weevil surveys with CABI - non native invasive species are yet another problem affecting the catchment.

Water Quality is Key

My view is that water quality is of paramount importance. Once that is achieved at a safe and acceptable level, then we can turn our attention to making the visitor experience better. That is not to say some river enhancement works are not of benefit to the river itself and its ability to support a healthy range of biodiversity.

The issue of water quality is the perennial elephant in the room. We know that is failing spectacularly, but why is that? 

The focus normally falls on storm discharges or ‘spills’ from sewage treatments works (STW). Most recently, the Department for Environment has demanded plans from water companies setting out how they are going to deal with them, with the threat of fines of up to £250m for those failing to comply. This is a blunt and ineffective answer to a much wider problem, which will merely deflect water companies’ spending away from what they need to be focused on. Dealing with ‘spills’ is a part of that, but there is so much more to be done besides. 

And those spills, by the way, are still permitted in some circumstances by the Environment Agency and, therefore, indirectly by the very Government that is seeking to fine the water companies. 

Are Storm Discharges the Main Problem?

I accept that on smaller, less complex river systems these spills may be the primary cause of pollution. We all agree they are far from ideal and should cease, but where do they sit in the league of importance for a river such as the Colne?

In the many years I have been looking after it,  I can recall numerous fish mortalities – the determining factor used by the Environment Agency for classification of pollution incidents. 

Category 1 applies to incidents leading to significant fish mortality. Unfortunately, even this apparently simple process has been proven to fail. 

For example, what happens if you have a major pollution incident six months after all the fish have been killed in a previous one? There are none there this time, so it is impossible to apply ‘Cat 1’. The answer is that it invariably gets ignored. Has that happened in the Colne? Yes – and on a number of occasions. Of those numerous fish mortality events, I can only think of just two that were directly related to a storm discharge.

Environment Agency budgets have been cut to the bone and it now says low level pollution is unlikely to be investigated. Sadly, I am seeing more evidence of that, along with a steady decline in the standard of work. We are nevertheless fortunate to have some really good people in the Herts/North London area who are partners in ColneCAN and have an absolutely vital role to play.

I don’t believe the two incidents mentioned above were directly the ‘fault’ of Thames Water and if I am correct, then one might argue that I have not seen major and immediate pollution caused by ‘spills’ from a sewage treatment works in the Colne Valley at all.

I’ve seen plenty through other means, though. So where should we be focusing our attention? What is actually causing the problem? 

The Main Causes of Poor Water Quality in Local Rivers

I suggest it could be any of the following: 

• Agricultural run-off, 
• Road run-off, 
• Misconnections (read on for an explanation), 
• Sewer blockages caused by us, 
• Deliberate pollution, 
• Historic landfill leeching, 
• Grey water disposal from boats on canals, The terms and conditions for licensed boat users issued by both the Canal & Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency allow the disposal of grey water (showers, washing machines etc) into the waterway while making only a request that low phosphate detergents are used.
• Commercial car washes. Many of which appear to discharge into rivers.

And the list goes on. Most of those listed will find their way to river via outfalls. We are recording the locations and have logged nearly three hundred so far.

Why does everyone think that sending their waste to a river is the acceptable thing to do?

Why do we as a society largely allow that to happen without question? 

Water companies (in our case Thames Water, which is our waste water utility) do not get off completely free, either, as failures in sewer network systems, overflows from them, poor maintenance of attenuation tanks etc all contribute to the problem. 

What Are Sewage Treatment Works Designed to Cope with?

Then, of course, there are the sewage treatment works (STWs) themselves. Forget about ‘spills’ for the moment. Each will be receiving our waste around the clock and dealing with it as they were designed to do – after removing the mountains of plastic we send them (that often causes the sewer blockages mentioned above) in the form of nappies, sanitary products, condoms, cotton buds and the like. The most amazing article that has turned up via a sewer at Maple Lodge was a lorry tyre – I kid you not! All we should ever flush is The Three Ps: pee, poo and paper.

At Maple Lodge alone, on average three large skip-loads of compressed plastic items need to be transported via specialised hazardous waste carriers to a licensed land fill site per week. Can you even begin to imagine the cost implications – money that is potentially taken away from environmental improvement elsewhere!

These treatment works were never designed to remove the myriad of chemicals and other micro pollutants we send them whether by design of through our natural waste products – pharmaceuticals being a prime example. 

All our rivers contain significant amounts of Metformin (diabetes medication) or Fipronil (a flea treatment for pets). Do you wash your dog at home and send the waste to the drain assuming the water company can remove it before it goes to river and contributes to the death of invertebrates? Think again. 

Water companies may also have trade waste agreements in place. For example, there is an agreement for HS2 to send up to nearly 1.720ml/d (1,720,000 litres a day) of trade waste to Maple Lodge. I will leave you to consider whether that is the right thing to do.

The key point in all this is that STWs are only designed to deal with the basics of human existence, using a biological process.  Everything else that arrives there may – or, crucially, may not ­– get some treatment on the way through. But if it does, it isn't by design. 

I am not an apologist for the water companies. I just want people to understand the issues and have a balanced view on all this. I challenged a national  journalist very recently who misquoted me and ignored half of what I told him in favour of a headline that was scathing of water companies and spills. I was astonished when he casually confirmed targeting water companies made good headlines and they were an easy target. That doesn’t strike me as responsible journalism and it misleads readers.

At the moment, all that stands between these detrimental issues and our rivers are the overwhelmed STWs. In recent years some of our rivers above the outflows from sewage works have been dry and even further downstream, where other tributaries have joined, it is not uncommon for 75% of the river flow to be coming from treated effluent. 

Abstraction and Water Loss

That fact opens a whole new debate about abstraction and water loss. Little water means little dilution of the chemicals entering it. Water companies, generally in the South East, recognise that without huge intervention we will have water shortages in the next few years. Water companies have been asked to collaborate on a regional level and ours is a group imaginatively called water resources south east or WRSE. https://www.wrse.org.uk

Several outline solutions are proposed, with some more advanced than others. But one of the earlier ones likely to be available to us involves diverting treated effluent from the Midlands area (instead of it going to the sea and waste) down the canal system and removing it for treatment at Leighton Buzzard ready for use in our system. 

Tony standing in a dry river Colne bed upstream of Watford.

Earlier in this article I offered to expand on three specific issues. 

1. Chemical status and bathing quality water 

Our catchment has no water deemed to be of bathing quality standard. This is an extract from the website https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/help-understanding-data.html that sets out the criteria for it should you visit anywhere that has that determination.

A sample tells us the quality of the water at that specific time, but water can change even over the course of one day. In each sample we test for bacteria that indicate whether there is faecal matter in the water. These bacteria are known as faecal indicator organisms or FIOs and the specific ones that we test for are:

• Escherichia coli or E. coli (EC)
• Intestinal enterococci (IE)

These bacteria can come from many sources including sewage, agricultural livestock, wildlife, birds and road drainage.

These ‘tests’ are carried out quite regularly but do not guarantee water quality between those times and, more importantly in my view, they appear to ignore the wide range of other potentially harmful micro pollutants. 

So, we have no bathing quality water in our river, but does that stop us allowing our children and pets to enter it? Most children I see paddling normally finish up bathing in some form, whether intentional or not.

Remember: not one river in the country meets good chemical status according to WFD criteria.

2. Misconnections

These can be as simple as a house or even just an appliance inside it being connected to a surface water drain that should be taking clean rain from your roof or patio and ultimately sending it to a river. In this instance the river will receive the contents of your toilet, washing machine etc with the obvious consequences.

It could be that the run off from your roof or drive enters a foul drain and that too is a misconnection. Most of the liquid received at STW’s (especially at times of high rain fall) should not be going there. Misconnections play a part in that and can contribute to the very storm discharges or spills that we blame the water companies for. 

This mixing up of foul and rainwater can occur in other ways too but misconnections is something everyone can check their homes for and correct if you find an issue.

The worst case is that you could even be prosecuted if a problem is identified but not subsequently corrected 

3. Micro-pollutants in our rivers

It is important to understand that an enormous number and variety of micro-pollutants are already present in our rivers. The Colne Valley Fisheries Consultative with the support of Affinity Water and Thames Water, has undertaken an analytical study of water and sediment samples from various sites in the upper catchment. I have been fortunate indeed to have worked with two very knowledgeable colleagues on this and a paper determining our findings will be available within the next few weeks. 

My next step is to secure support to allow the investigation to continue. There is much more to do in order to fully understand the extent of the issue. I don’t want to give too much away at this stage, but we have identified hundreds of different chemicals of which a significant number are present even in water coming out of the ground at the source of the Colne. 

Many of these chemicals have been recorded at sites way upstream of any potential influence from sewage treatment works so whilst they may contribute to the bigger picture they are not the holy grail in terms of our search and study.

We are doing our best to properly understand these disturbing issues, and will continue to champion the cause of our rivers. Doing that has never been more important or urgent than it is now.

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