Anglian and Severn Trent make joint river commitments

Anglian Water and Severn Trent have joined forces to improve river health in their regions and commit to increasing accessibility to designated bathing rivers.

The companies created a Get River Positive plan with five pledges to revive waterways with a central focus on ensuring combined sewer overflows and sewage treatment works do not harm the water environment.

“Although we have improved the health of our rivers significantly in the last 30 years, there is much more to do to make our regions’ rivers the healthiest they can be.  We listened to our communities and wider stakeholders and understand the need for us to take the lead on river health. We must go further to do the right thing,” Liv Garfield, Severn Trent chief executive, said.

“The only way to make a real difference is to identify clear and actionable commitments and provide real transparency on our progress. We cannot do this alone, we need everyone to understand their role in river health. That is why we are committed to redoubling our own efforts and investment to help others reduce their impact as well as our own,” she added.

The plan comprises five pledges that build upon Water UK’s 21st Century Rivers report with each company agreeing to:

• Ensure storm overflows and sewage treatment works do not harm rivers. Both organisations will cut their use of CSOs by 2025 to 20 discharges per year, and ensure their actions do not cause rivers to be unhealthy by 2030.

• Create more opportunities for everyone to use rivers. Within 10 years, 90% of the population in these regions will live within an hour’s drive of a bathing site. Both companies will create more opportunities for canoeists, anglers and recreational events to use rivers.

• Support others to improve and care for rivers. This spring the companies will offer incentives to farmers to employ regenerative farming practices and provide access to green financing. The companies will support the campaign to remove the automatic right to connect for new developments and champion Fleur Anderson’s bill to ban wet wipes.

• Enhance rivers and create new habitats so wildlife can thrive. This will include establishing habitats for native species of wildlife, such as great crested newts, beavers, otters and cuckoos across the Midlands as well as re-introducing salmon and burbot in Anglian’s region.

• Be open and transparent about performance and plans. Information about water quality will be readily accessible to the public on Anglian and Severn Trent’s websites by the end of 2022.

The pledges are designed to be a framework for each company to build their operational and environmental plans upon.

Peter Simpson chief executive for Anglian Water added that the ambitions reflect customer wishes for the company.

“We’ve come a long way since privatisation in protecting the environment and helping it to flourish – today marks an evolution in our promise and will see us go even further,” he said.

“As the Environment Bill became the Environment Act, we made it clear we felt even more action was needed to ensure the future health of our rivers – by coming together as an industry, securing the right investment as part of the regulatory process, and working collaboratively with other sectors. We firmly believe in the power of collaboration to solve big challenges which is why it’s vital we bring the right people together. Get River Positive is the start of a movement, of tangible action that will deliver the changes we all want to see.”

The pledges come after mounting public pressure to turn around the poor health of rivers. There is currently only one inland designated bathing site at Ilkley in Yorkshire and all English waterways were found by Environment Agency to have chemical pollution.