POOR RIVER QUALITY SINKS PROTEST SWIM

ELITE swimmers taking part in a relay down the River Thames to demand action on the sewage crisis were forced to abandon it in Henley due to high E. coli levels.

The swimmers set off from Lechlade, Gloucestershire, on Monday and were aiming to swim 200km to reach Putney yesterday (Thursday).

The group, which includes Olympians and athletes from all four nations of the UK, would then travel by boat to Westminster calling on the government to “end the sewage scandal”.

The swim was co-ordinated by Cornwall-based Surfers Against Sewage to raise awareness of the scale of pollution in the country’s rivers, lakes and seas.

On Wednesday morning, the swimmers came to a halt at Marsh Lock after water quality readings at the River & Rowing Museum in Mill Meadows recorded 4,212 colony forming units per 100mL (cfu) of E. coli.

The threshold at which the Environment Agency deems water quality to be “poor” is above 900 cfu.

The swimmers came planned to re-enter the water downstream of Hambleden Lock.

The group was recording the quality of the water throughout the challenge, measuring E. coli, ammonia, and oxygen along the river.

Giles Bristow, the group’s chief executive, said it was working with citizen scientists and communities along the river to monitor the safety of the water.

In Henley, it worked with volunteer-run HoTWater, which provides up-to-date E. coli readings from four locations along the Henley stretch of the river.

It monitors two locations a week to give river users an insight into the quality of the water, as the Environment Agency does not provide routine water monitoring.

Mr Bristow said: “We’re demanding transformation of the water sector itself but also the bathing water regulations that allow people to know whether they can go in and swim and use and enjoy the water.

“At the moment those regulations are not fit for purpose. We need to do so much more to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas and we’re missing the quality of data to know whether it is even safe for humans to be in the water.

“The monitoring regime that we have under the regulations just isn’t sufficient to allow the 17 million people in the UK who want to be able to use our waters to use it.

“The more we test, the more we tend to find that our waters in the UK are more polluted than we expect.

“We need those bathing water regulations to catch up with the state of our waters and to get to grips with what is needed to clean them up.”

Mr Bristow called on the government to “transform” the privatised water sector, which he said prioritised profit over healthy water ways.

He said: “This is a massively failing system. Last year, there were over half a million sewage discharges into our rivers, lakes and seas, 4.7m hours of pollution just pouring into waters from the water sector itself because they prioritise making a profit for shareholders and creating dividends and we just think that can’t be right.

“Clean water is the foundation of a healthy economy, so we need businesses and communities, everybody relies on clean water and therefore we need to have that underpin everything else we’re doing.”

Laura Reineke, founder of Friends of the Thames and lives in Binfield Heath, called the state of the river an “embarrassment”.

She said: “We are literally killing our biodiversity, choking them in chemicals and we cannot allow young, fit adults, who are Olympians, to swim in this level of pathogens, it’s a serious danger to health.”

Ms Reineke, who is also an open water swimmer and Henley Mermaid, said she no longer swam in the stretch of the river.

She said: “I don’t swim in this stretch ever anymore, it’s way too bad. I also have to be quite careful about swimming up at Shiplake near the Loddon River.

“There is a massive lack of care now in this country when it comes to our nature and our biodiversity and that needs to be turned on its head and changed.

“It all starts with education, it starts with campaigning, it starts with telling people exactly what’s going on, what the truth is behind all of this.”

Citizen scientist Nigel Baker, who tests water quality along the river for the HoTWater app, said the water quality had been consistently poor over the summer.

He said: “We measure E. coli, which is an indicator of the faecal content in the water, and I think I’ve been surprised how, even when it’s not raining, how those levels have remained high for the last few months.

“It’s been very warm and that might be a factor in maintaining high levels but typically people think when it rains then within a day or so that’s when you see high readings, but we’ve seen high readings constantly.

“I think when it’s rained as it has done the last few days what we’re seeing is a high peak on top of high levels, so there are no peaks and troughs anymore it seems, it’s just high constantly.

“By high, we mean it’s more than 900 cfus per 100ml which is the level above which they say you should not be swimming in the water.

“It’s been constantly above 900 for months and months so personally I would not swim in this stretch of the river.

“It’s just ironic with Henley and its reputation being built around the river, it appears to be a real blank spot for pathogens in the water, so I wouldn’t swim in it.

“Our data is there to help users make an informed decision about when and how to use the river.”