A story of one British river - The River Wye

So as a child I used to run off and come and sleep on its banks and swim in e water and I remember my career's teacher in school at 13 said what do you want to do When you leave school and I go I just want to be by the river and live an adventurous life And she said that won't pay the bills There is a river on the border of England and Wales and about one and a half million people visit this area every year It was voted the best river in England and Wales in 2010 but in the last five years or so It's been the center of a massive campaign a campaign against pollution It really didn't make sense to me how a river went from making headlines about rural holidays to headlines about an urgent environmental crisis and so I decided to go there and see for myself what's going on and talk to people I realised about eight years ago that the taste of the river was Starting to change and because I hadn't lived here very long I didn't know how shocking it was I think most people accept that there are problems And to do my best to Understand what is happening how we got here and how to actually reverse all of this This is the River Wye What strikes you first when you see this river is not a terrible smell or dead fish washed up on the shore or thick sludge of unknown origin The river looks clean I mean it doesn't smell the water is kind of clear and the whole thing looks beautiful It's Only when you start looking closer and talking to locals do you begin to see the whole picture What you see and what you get are two different things Angela knows more about the river than Probably any other person in the world She's been close with the Wye pretty much her entire life This section here you used to be able to look at the rocks and they'd all be individual colors You just see the trees you see the overall picture everything looks good Nicola moved to the area not too long ago The people who have lived here for a long time would say no there was the odd algal bloom where the river would turn green It looks you know you can see it in the pictures it's like phosphorescent green Lime green places It was thick I mean for people who were swimming or canoeing in it it was disgusting and heartbreaking What people say is one thing but we can also see this decline In data The salmon populations are dropping E coli levels are regularly exceeding safe thresholds there's too much phosphorus in the river from runoff and sewage and I didn't see any Algal blooms when I went there and to be fair they are rare But what I did see is that the rocks On the edges of the river algae often cover everything and you're simply not supposed to see all of it e slime I mean don't get me wrong the rocks aren't supposed to be completely clean bu People that have lived here for a long time say that absolutely wasn't the case It used to be like gin clear water and the stones were clean and it was pleasant to enter But probably the most striking and visible change in the river happened with a humble plant called water crowfoot Water crowfoot gives this beautiful river s highly protected status It was like the keystone species of the river And I came to realize that it's absolutely central to understanding what exactly is happening w e Y Water crowfoot is an aquatic plant It roots itself in the river bed and stretches all the way o the surface It looks like this long green hair and it grows thick In some stretches of the Y It used to cover everything Canoeists talk about having to battle through it because their canoes were often swamped Get caught up in it Wild swimmers adapted their books to say you have to be really careful of the currents Weed because your legs can get tangled in it One of the key things about water crowfoot is that It provides protection where small fish can hide and large fish can spawn It is what creates this entire ecosystem Unique habitat For over 40 years my favorite thing has been to go beneath it and grip a rock and then when you're below that rock and you've got the water crowfoot in your hair and Then you get to see the beautiful aquatic life that this river has The swans feed on it Some Bugs and snails lay their eggs on it It is the lifeblood of the Y If the Y were a rainforest Water crowfoot would be the trees Remove the water crowfoot and you lose the entire ecosystem of that river Now it's gone I mean nearly the whole river is gone We don't have any official information Numbers but people say 90 percent or more of it is now gone A good question to ask is why is the Has the water crowfoot disappeared Here's one common theory The water crowfoot was severely weakened by the algal blooms The algae made the water murky settled on its leaves and blocked the sunlight for the water crowfoot essentially starving it It could have recovered with time if only it had the time because while it was recovering from algal blooms one of the largest floods of This century happened on the Y in February 2020 An enormous mass of water bulldozed through the River ripping out the already weakened water crowfoot Okay but algal blooms don't just happen on their own Something is causing them and in the Y catchment that thing that fuels algal blooms mos By far chickens are the most numerous There are around 20 million chickens in the Y catchment or 88 per square kilometer For every person Most of them are raised in these large intensive factory farms like this one and I wanted to see for myself what they look like up close but it turned out to be a very hard thing Thing to do You can't expect to see them from public roads The whole region is littered with them but they're hidden from view To see them you have to go up Massive chicken sheds They're called intensive poultry units The modern ones have around 50 000 Birds each On average most farms will produce seven generations of chickens per year about six weeks per generation Together with the neighboring River Severn catchment this brings Raise the total number of chickens to around 50 million at any given moment and 350 million Per year These chickens are obviously not evil you know The problem is what do you do with the poop 20 million chickens produce a lot of poop and there weren't any well-enforced regulations about what you should do with the poop and so what usually ended up happening is that it got spread On land which then inevitably caused it to run off into rivers leading to algal blooms And I want you to pay extra attention to their regulations because this is really one of the key issues of this whole thing There was the farming advice that said you shouldn't spread excess manure but the thing is nobody is really going to stop you from doing so It basically said yeah You shouldn't spread excess manure but if you have too much and can't do anything with it Then you know just do it And so I wanted to speak with someone from the local councils It oversees regulation in this region and is aware of the issue of properly handling manure Uneven because some will do it and some won't creates an uneven playing field for everyone else You don't have to do anything extra with it The manure and this is one of the key issues Let's make a list of issues But also you know Every farm every chicken shed wasn't just built because a farmer decided to Every single one had to be approved by the local councils They had to look through the application consider it and then decide to give permission to build it So didn't the planning authorities see that having Twenty million chickens in this one area is going to be a problem In terms of planning because I remember sitting on the planning committee determining some of these and what you're approving is a Structure a shed so when you look at it you know how it's going to fit into the landscape You Maybe you look at it in terms of odor and dust immunity from neighboring properties but are you going to look at whether or not that farmer is going to take the litter and sell it to another farmer who'll sell it to a farmer who might sell it to a fourth farmer or a fifth farmer and someone a At some point down the line it applies to them That's not the job of the planning authority So there was this sort of void in planning oversight and it's honestly not too surprising The chicken industry began growing in the UK in the 1950s and has grown immensely ever since but the systems and the Regulations in place haven't kept pace with the growing demand for chicken leaving wide open holes in planning control such as taking into account the combined impact of chicken manure on river health The regulations were not particularly strong so there was a gap a regulatory gap Okay so just to recap there are these two issues Here's our list of issues One the poop from 20 Millions of chickens end up in rivers because regulations on how to manage manure are not particularly well enforced and second there are 20 million chickens here in the first place Because the planning protocol didn't include checking the combined impact of chicken manure on river health Okay but what about the farmers You know from their perspective no one paid Pay attention to what they were doing for decades and then suddenly what was business as usual becomes environmentally problematic overnight So what do they think Well first and foremost that's Ben He runs a farm with all sorts of plants and animals including chickens I love the fact that the council and the local authorities are blaming farmers when I think it was those guys that caused it Actually gave the planning permission in the first place You know it was always going to be a problem eventually when you put 20 million chickens in a catchment Okay but does he Recognise the issue as a whole I mean it's a fairly standard idea and understanding that we're producing far too much phosphate for the catchment Yeah right chicken manure is Exceptionally rich in phosphorus also known as phosphate So we're going to have to come up with solutions to move phosphate away Right now a lot of this phosphate ends up in rivers It's a very This phosphate is a valuable resource it's a shame to see it being leached and run off the land And you know just like the river the farmers are at the mercy of It's a terrible shame like the demand for very cheap chicken which is way larger than them That we can go and buy chicken for three or four pounds right now in a supermarket isn't it Totally undervalued You can't buy a cheap chicken and then complain about what they're seeing Either they're not likely to swim in the river or the fish are dying or something like that or canoeing They're getting rashes and that sort of thing Cheap food as I keep telling people costs the earth About 80% of the chicken farmers in the region are contracted by a company called Evara Foods and for a very long time they've been one of the drivers behind intensifying The chicken farming in the region And if you can grow lots of chickens quickly and cheaply they're going to be a very attractive farmer to contract The way the whole of farming has as been pushed for the last 40-50 years and is still intensifying Intensify and turn everything into a factory If the consumer keeps demanding a chicken for three pounds and therefore places a huge demand on the farmer to produce a chicken for three pounds And the only way you can produce a chicken for three pounds is to pollute the environment then who does that sit with the farmer or the consumer Well it should fit with them both Okay let's add a high demand for chicken to our list of issues Farmers don't spread manure on fields because they disrespect nature they do it because they live in a commercial system that prioritizes utmost efficiency And the sad thing is that even if a farmer wants to do better like exporting our manure out of the white catchment to where it's needed or to a processing plant to extract the phosphorus from the manure they will spend more money on it an they will make from it The point is that a farmer can do the right thing with the manure but then they will bear the cost for that Essentially they will be penalizing themselves for being Environmentally friendly Those are the options No chicken farmer goes out of his way to pollute e environment You know I'm sure if you gave them options that weren't so polluting then they would choose differently would jump at the chance I would prefer not to pollute give me the same amount of money and at's no problem That is exactly this part of the equation and one of the solutions to that is a level playing field Basically what I mean by that is that the governme He steps in and says that from now on properly managing manure is the norm Everyone has to do it No exceptions meaning enforcing the regulations In that way those farmers who do better are no Penalized for doing so That's a level playing field But Ben had a slightly different take on it This I don't think it should be a level playing field at all I think it should be quite the opposite I actually think those that are doing environmental benefits should be actually Rewarded rather than penalized On a different front supermarkets can also play their role in how they label things It's called mandatory method of production labeling It's essentially A label that would be on any packet of meat indicating how the animal was raised So is it intensive Indoor Is it more space indoors Is it free range And that could be a way of changing consumer demand Helping people know what they're buying and maybe incentivizing them to spend a bit more and get a better quality chicken eat it less frequently and that farmer get paid a bit more as well That little bit more can make all the difference If it's 50p more then unfortunately that's the cost A clean environment a clean river and a long-term future for generations to come If we can address these three issues the entire situation can improve dramatically But what about all These issues have in common that there needs to be a reason to do all of this There needs to be a reason to do the right thing and that is only something that the regulators and the Governments can incentivize There's no incentive to do the right thing because everyone is giving out Guidance and advice Only the regulators can enforce the law Farmers could be part of the solution if given the opportunity to do so Of keeping stuff that should not be in the river Out of the river Okay you know what I've been talking about the why from a bit of a depressing angle Angle I've outlined the issues water growth would decline phosphorus regulatory gaps and an uneven playing field and you know often when talking about environmental issues that's where the current situation lies The story ends But with the reason why it doesn't Thousands of people have been hard at work trying to protect e why and it's been working Let me show you what I found Proper manure management I didn' I never thought I'd be so excited to talk about proper manure management but proper manure management In May 2024 Herefordshire Council adopted a plan stating that from now on farmers will have to log ow much manure they have how much phosphorus is in that manure and if they have too much how They're planning to get rid of it But there were some who disagreed The national farmers The union contested that and said "No no we're not going to rebrand our manure as waste " And they lost the farmers union lost that challenge in court Which means we are many Steps closer to proper manure management Sometime before that in 2021 Herefordshire Council stopped Approving new chicken farms mostly It was the first council to do that The council of Powys Wales did the same in 2023 although not perfectly But not every council followed In May 2024 Shropshire council approved a new chicken farm housing more than 200 000 birds But this didn' get unnoticed One of the independent researchers studying the poultry industry in the UK Alison Catton wanted to do something about this and I had a call with her When I looked a I just thought this is a really terrible place to put a shed She took this issue to court You Know it's ridiculous to have to take legal action but when you file objections and send them data and information and they just ignore it you know sometimes you're left with no choice It seems that legal cases are making a bit of a difference right now The case was won No new chicken farm in Shropshire at least not this one This is a big victory deal This is this For the first time in planning decisions they took into account the combined e impact of chicken manure and said no this time we're not approving it Right now the local councils are busy figuring out how to best restructure farming and regulation in the area to help Restore the river They are drafting a plan So we've got the funding for that and the business case is to make that plan which will be a very important piece of work Things are looking Good Now the question is whether it all sticks gets done and works properly in the long term But before all of this political change could happen it had to be fueled by data and for years Researchers at Lancaster University have been collecting that data to finally apply rigorous science to what locals have been noticing for a while They proved that the Y is polluted mainly with phosphorus and the vast majority of it comes from chicken manure Data gained some power But academics were not the first to collect data Hundreds Of the locals have trained themselves to test the water all across the catchment Some of them also participated in this massive demonstration that you've been seeing all throughout the film To finally make themselves heard And then those citizen science volunteers collected more than 40 000 data points and created something absolutely beautiful: a publicly accessible map of pollution In Y They called it Yviz and Nicola was a part of it We were overwhelmed with the response I mean hundreds of people wanted to do it Local people could look at the map to see where they live and check the water quality results nearby Just people being proactive and trying to do something Something about an issue And everyone brought their gifts into that There was me a journalist so I could help communicate what were finding out We had someone who was really good at websites Who built us a website to have a public platform We had a filmmaker and photographer who could capture what was going on and artists who did exhibitions with us We had data managers who could Built Yviz We had scientists and freshwater ecologists We had teachers We had educators and all those people coming together Just it was like the full package but everyone was united In caring about the river and wanting to know what was going on and how we could restore it The momentum is there It's slow and needs more fuel but things are moving and it's very crucial To know that they're not moving on their own and they're not going to continue to move on their own Things have been moving and improving because people have been volunteering hours and hours of They spend their time every day trying to do something about this So there you have it There's this big issue but we can barely start to see how things are promising to improve The old regulations w The gaps are being revised Manure management is being improved and enforced Things are moving The damage done to the Y is what happens when the rules of the game slowly change and regulations and policy can't adapt quickly enough When there are gaps in regulations when farmers are pressured by the markets and when the ecological cost of chicken is not reflected in the supermarket Price the world is constantly changing and how well we move through these changes will depend on how quickly we can adapt Right now everything in the region is undergoing this adaptation Even if it's long overdue we are at a very important moment in the history of the River Y We have seen a little bit of progress and even that has already helped the river Yeah if we look up there the swans and the cygnets and then they're diving down to get some of the water croaker that has just returned to this section which is really nice Nature has a remarkable ability to recover if we just let it do its thing if we just stop putting things It's things that don't belong there Those algal blooms the Y hasn't seen one like that in a while and in a few places there's already more water crowfoot Even if we do everything right it may It will take 10 15 or more years before Y is completely clean There is no quick fix but in the grand scheme of things A long time is just a short period 15 years is nothing We have to remember you know there is bad going on ere is pollution going on but always keep the beauty in everything because if you don't keep that beauty in what you're seeing and what you're looking at you can become bitter and as a Campaigner this is my eighth year doing this and bitterness doesn't help anyone aggression doesn't bring anything but persistence if you're persistent and they know that you won't give up Give up on what you're trying to achieve and the voice will obviously grow then you will get results Hey thank you for watching the film but before you go there are a few exciting things on the horizon that you should know about Probably the biggest one is the lawsuit against Vara Foods a poultry company and a few other companies They are expected to pay for the damage caused by their businesses to the Y and the local economy And if you want to Learn more about the Y and help support the Y even more one of the best things you can do is to Follow and support the NGOs involved in all of this I'll put a list on the screen somewhere here I know it's a big list If you want to just get started somewhere I recommend The Y and Us Foundation They are pretty good Friends of the River Y helped me quite a lot And River Action is really nice too And yeah you can also share this film with others If you feel like it You'd better feel like it Let's spread the word Let's help Y Yeah all right Bye-bye Nice Very nice Farmers are under pressure from the markets They're so loud I swear