Demanding Clean Water

Written by Charley, Nov 2024

Swimming in the River Dart, June 2023

Today is the March for Clean Water in London, where people are marching:

To rescue our rivers
To save our sea
To end pollution
Against polluting for profit
To fight the big fish
To save the little fish
For clean swim spots
For plentiful water
To stop ecocide
For healthy waters everywhere.

I am there in spirit, writing this from home because my body and mind told me they need a day of rest at home. I hope the day is going well!

The photo above is from a visit to Devon (where I’m from) last summer. I didn’t bother trying to look up the water quality at the time (didn’t know how) but I have just now found this website from the Friends of the Dart – River Dart water testing programme. It doesn’t look great, and I’m pretty sure it’s worse than it was when I was a child 20-30 years ago.

Potential swim spot near my home

I LOVE swimming in rivers and the sea. I moved to Salisbury in Feb 2024 and was excited to find what looked like a great swim spot less than a mile from my new home, on the River Bourne. I then looked it up on The Rivers Trust’s Is my river fit to play in? map and decided that with 3,980 hours of untreated sewage discharged not far upstream in 2023, I would sadly NOT be swimming there. Salisbury famously has five rivers (the Avon, Bourne, Ebble, Nadder and Wylye), and I have yet to work out if any are good/safe/clean to swim in.

The Rivers Trust map information for my would-be swim spot

I did some house sitting a few years ago on the River Thames near Oxford, and the owners kindly said I was welcome to use their paddle board and kayak while I was there. These were a fun novelty for me, and I could use them without worrying too much about the water quality. But I really wanted to swim! There was a heatwave, and I braved properly getting in the water a couple of times, with a thorough shower straight after and definitely not putting my head under. The swims were not particularly refreshing or relaxing as I was worried about how clean the water was and whether I might get sick. And the water in the Thames is disconcertingly warm, and there are motor boats going up and down a lot.

Paddleboarding on the River Thames, Aug 2021

Margate beach, Aug 2024

This summer, I spent a weekend with friends in Margate, and there was no question that I was going for a swim – and hoping the friends would join. They weren’t sure as they thought the water wasn’t clean. I used the Surfers Against Sewage Pollution Alerts app and found no reason not to swim, and we had a lovely time. I got an alert a few weeks later to say “A Southern Water sewage overflow has activated” (I had saved the location). 🙁

“WATER IS LIFE.

Yet here, in Britain, it’s on life support.

We are marching to reclaim our right to clean, healthy and abundant water for all people across the UK.

March for Clean Water is a national gathering of all those concerned and outraged about the state of our waterways.

Together, we can resolve this public health emergency by demanding the new government enforce the current law and deliver new legislation that will end all pollution, and restore our rivers, waterways, seas and reservoirs to full health by 2030.”