Campaigner determined to have river cleaned up

DAVE Wallace doesn’t look like the stereotypical environmental campaigner.

The 53-year-old father of five from Henley works in fintech (financial technology) and is as surprised as anyone to find himself in the position of a “citizen scientist” taking on Thames Water for its failure to protect the river.

Standing on the riverbank in Fawley in his Crocs, he lowers a beaker on the end of a long metal pole into the water.

He rinses it several times before scooping up a sample and pouring it into a clear plastic tube held by his wife, Jacqui, 54.

The two of them peer in. “It’s very green but you can see the bottom,” says Mr Wallace.

With latex gloves on, he squeezes some water into two small plastic vials, which contain powder to show the presence of nitrates, which largely come from agricultural sources, and phosphates, which largely come from sewage effluent.

He tells Siri to set a timer for three minutes and then the couple stand back and watch as the water turns pink.

On the day we are testing, Tuesday July 25, the nitrate level is between two and five parts parts per million. Anything over 1ppm is considered a high level of pollution.

Phosphate levels are between 0.2 and 0.5ppm. Anything over 0.1ppm is considered high.

Mr Wallace shakes his head as he uploads the data to a website via his phone.

It is results like this that have galvanised him, in less than 12 months, to become an activist to improve water quality in one of the most iconic stretches of water in Britain, the Henley Mile, the royal regatta course.

He and his wife founded the Henley River Action group with Chloe Jones, 34, a fitness instructor from Henley, and they are determined to use data on pollution levels to drive positive change.

Mr Wallace says: “I’ve always loved the river and being near it. There’s something about the river and Henley which I think is almost more special than most places.”

He feels he was “naive” to trust those tasked with looking after the river. “You know, assuming that corporations are there, because they’ve got sustainability reports and all the other bits, you assume they’re trying to do the right thing,” he says.

Mr Wallace only became fully aware of the problems of sewage pollution in the river when taking part in the Thames Marathon swim from Henley to Marlow last August and says he was “horrified”.

He says: “I posted on LinkedIn afterwards that as I got towards Marlow the water quality was really poor and I thought I was probably swimming in faecal matter.

“My friend put me in touch with James Wallace (no relation), who had just started as chief executive of the environmental charity River Action.

“We had a walk from Henley to Hambleden and back and he explained what was going on.”

James Wallace pointed out that the Henley sewage treatment works, off Marlow Road, discharges into the Thames via the Fawley Court stream.

Mr Wallace said: “He said, ‘There’s a sewage works here and Thames Water are pumping sewage into the river. Really? By the end of the walk I was like, ‘God, this is insane’. I just thought, ‘That’s not what happens in modern Britain’.

“Yet every day you’ve got treated sewage coming into the River Thames from here but ‘treated sewage’ in inverted commas — solids and bits removed but it has still got a bacterial load. It has still got phosphates and nitrates.

“We’re so lucky here we have this incredible stretch of river. You really start taking notice of the insect life, it’s really magical, then to think that we’re just treating it so badly becomes very upsetting.”

The water in the streams crossing Fawley Meadows to the Thames does not appear clean today. One is grey and cloudy and another has an oily film on the surface, interspersed with floating brown lumps.

But Mr Wallace wants more than anecdotal observations, he is determined to generate hard data to provide empirical evidence of what is currently happening in the river ecosystem.

He says: “It’s very easy to be very subjective, which is why I was very keen that we would do the testing.

“You can look at stuff and say, ‘Oh, that’s terrible’ and it is terrible but we would need to send that off for analysis in order reach the right conclusions.

“And it doesn’t do anyone any good if you’re being hyperbolic about the whole thing.”

All three Henley River Action founders were trained in how to accurately test river water for pollutants by independent consultant Tim Harris.

He showed them the protocols for cleaning the equipment and the importance of taking all the samples from the same places to ensure consistency across the data set.

The three citizen scientists tested the river quality levels daily between May 30 and June 27 and uncovered dangerous levels of bacteria. They published their results with River Action, which had funded the study.

Henley Royal Regatta chairman Sir Steve Redgrave called for urgent action on sewage pollution in the Thames as a result of their findings.

The group has now received funding from another environmental charity, Earthwatch, to carry out twice-weekly tests at two separate sites along the Henley Mile over the course of a year.

All the data will be uploaded online so that the results are publicly accessible.

Mr Wallace hopes this will help to keep the issue in the public consciousness and keep the pressure on Thames Water.

He says: “I think the danger with all of this stuff is you kind of have an initial burst of enthusiasm and the profile kind of goes up and then people kind of forget about it.

“We just want to make sure that this isn’t forgotten because it’s really important.

“What we want to do is to keep monitoring, keep the pressure on, keep educating people locally.

The more people who realise what’s going on, the more pressure there’ll be on the people responsible to behave responsibly.

“I think we’ve got a unique opportunity because Thames Water is going to upgrade the sewage treatment works. We want that to be done in consultation with us, as the public.”

Mr Wallace is planning to use part of a forthcoming holiday to Switzerland to visit a sewage plant and learn the Swiss approach to waste treatment.

He says: “If you had asked me 12 months ago, I’d have said why would I be doing this? There’s the Environment Agency to do it, Thames Water to look after our water.”

However, he says that carrying out the river testing as a volunteer is highly rewarding.

“The whole process is incredibly enjoyable,” he says. “I would encourage anyone wanting to know what’s going on to help test.

“It has really connected me with the river. There’s no substitute for going out and seeing this stuff for yourself.”

He wants to help improve river water quality and ensure that the ecosystem is restored for the benefit of fish, insect and plant life that are dependent upon it as well as people who enjoy swimming and boating.

Mr Wallace says: “I know all this stuff is going to cost a lot of money but I’d rather my money was spent on cleaning up the rivers than on paying some faceless shareholder fund or pension fund in Canada the money.

“I think we sort of slept-walked into this privatisation without really realising the consequences.

“I want Thames Water to stop pumping treated and untreated sewage into the Thames.

“I want the river to be treated as an entity, which is respected, loved and appreciated by all.”

To see the results of the testing, visit www.freshwaterwatch.org/pages/
henley-and-marlow-river-action

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