80 volunteers sign up to test Thames for pollution

EIGHTY people signed up to help test the River Thames for pollution at a community meeting organised by the Henley and Marlow River Action Group.

Dave Wallace, who co-founded the group, set out his ambition to make this the most tested stretch of river in the UK at the meeting held at the Lockdown Lodge pop-up restaurant near Hambleden Lock on Monday evening.

Thanks to the new volunteers, the group now has the capacity to carry out testing at additional sites in the centre of town and at the Willow marina in Wargrave.

About 100 people attended the event, which was chaired by James Wallace, chief executive of national campaign group River Action.

Other speakers included Laura Reineke, of the Henley Mermaids, Ash Smith and Peter Hammond, of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, Andrew Hodge, an Olympic rowing champion and chief executive of water data specialist Aquascope, and Aggie Hodges, a bathing water development officer from campaign group Thames21.

Mr Wallace, 53, a citizen scientist from Henley who carried out testing along the Henley Royal Regatta course in May and June, said he had been “massively uneducated” about the issue previously.

He and his wife Jaqui, 54, and Chloe Jones, 34, uncovered damaging levels of phosphates, nitrates and E coli along the Henley Mile.

Mr Wallace described the response to the results as “incredible”.

“We had TV companies lining up on the river banks trying to talk to us,” he said. “It just shows that people are really interested in this.”

This week, the group started a year-long testing programme at its current sites at Fawley Meadows, which is being funded by environmental charity Earthwatch.

Mr Wallace said the more data the group gathered the more pressure was put on Thames Water to take notice.

He said: “One of the things I think we should aspire to have the most tested stretch of river in the UK. Why don’t we just say that’s what we’re going to do?

“We want to understand what is going on. The more educated we are, the more Thames Water will be forced to actually listen to us as a community.”

Ms Reineke said that sewage spills were not always reported by Thames Water on its event duration monitoring map.

She said: “We’ve heard recently, in fact this last couple of weeks when it has been raining, that a lot of the reporting on the sewage leaks is ‘broken’.”.

“Somebody came up to us today saying that the river was disgusting this morning, so that’s not being reported.”

She asked people to email the Mermaids group with photos of discharges. She also announced that the group is planning to stage educational projects about river health in schools to help raise awareness of the issue.

James Wallace said the UK was facing a “freshwater emergency” and agreed that activism and leadership needed to come from within the community.

“One of the main things we would hope from tonight is for each of you in your own way to go back to your own community, your own family, your own business, however you integrate with this community, and take an interest.” Mr Hodge, whose company uses site sampling, satellite remote sensing and machine learning to provide data sets of water quality, said he wasn’t a campaigner.

But he added: “What I want to do is help provide some data, help provide the information which gives people the tools to go off and make a difference.

“Thank you to you guys who are going to pick up all the testing kits, get out into the rivers, get out into all your neighbourhood streams and get testing because that’s going to make the difference in the long term.”

Ms Hodges said that other citizen scientists had been testing the water for bacteria in support of an application to obtain a bathing water status site in the town.

She said: “It’s really great to see all these people who are active, caring about the river, coming together. It will be really interesting to see how all this data connects with what we’re gathering.”

The group is currently holding a consultation about river users and water quality in Henley and the results will be presented to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

After the meeting, Mr Wallace said he was pleased with how it had gone.

“It wasn’t just words, we got some action,” he said. “We’ll have one testing site in the town centre near the outlet pipe in Friday Street, and one at Wargrave as a direct consequence of the meeting.

“It’s brilliant that there’s so much interest in the topic and people are keen to get involved.

“I was really encouraged by the number of people who turned up and there were some really thoughtful questions. What we need to do now is to pick up on the momentum and keep going.”