Thousands join biggest-ever UK environmental lawsuit over “extensive and widespread pollution” in three rivers – the Wye, Lugg and Usk

by pppppppppppppppppd

5 comments

  1. A friendly reminder, animal-ag is the leading cause of river pollution in Wales.

  2. All the best to them. Farming is the prime driver of river pollution and wider nature loss in Wales and within 10 years is likely to be the highest emitter of Greenhouse gases. Almost all to produce food that is eaten in other countries. Welsh Government has been giving the sector a free pass for decades, so I can’t blame people for saying enough is enough with this challenge.

  3. Sigh, i do hope this will work, but remember, you voted to leave the very regulatory bodies (EU) that had consequences built in to egregious acts like this. So when you de-regulate that literally means you remove methods to identify, deal and punish anyone who pollutes like this (farmers or water companies its still irrelevant). So go ahead and file your lawsuits – they will not work (Although I hope it will change something).

  4. I’m doing some work on this river at the moment – it should be pointed out that due to the Wye being a cross-border catchment, Welsh Water can only do so much on their end. Much of the Wye, Lugg-southwards, is English. Guess where most of those 23~29 Million Chickens are raised? Not in the Upper Wye where it’s mostly agricultural crops, not animals. That will still cause fertiliser runoff issues, but nothing on par with poultry farm runoff.

    The cross-border issue causes another headache – the Welsh and English sides have their own agencies and institutions setting policy. Farmers on the Welsh side are getting different restrictions to follow compared to Farmers on the English side. Welsh Water has a different mandate from the Welsh Assembly to follow than Westminster directing DEFRA, directing whatever private water utility operates across the border. Sometimes it’s the same entity running both sides of one aspect of the Wye (i.e. Welsh Water might operate all of the Wye Catchment as a water utility, but I’m not certain), whereas the environmental policies are split directly in the middle which is [when you get these partnerships](https://www.gov.wales/welsh-and-uk-government-unite-1-million-fund-transform-river-wye).

    This gets worse when you start digging into the data to actually work on the Wye – [Look at this Catchment Map](https://environment.data.gov.uk/catchment-planning/ManagementCatchment/3117). The Welsh side is conspicusouly absent. England’s Catchment Explorer takes minutes to get the English Wye. Now time yourself [finding the Welsh side from here](https://naturalresources.wales/evidence-and-data/accessing-our-data/access-our-data-maps-and-reports/?lang=en). I haven’t found it yet, so I guess I have to make a FOI request. My last request said they’d get back to me in 2026…

    Try and get the animal numbers from a survey for the English and Welsh sides – England has it at catchment scale up to 2024, Wales has it from 2019 at a County scale. Why? Because that was the last time Wales was required to have the data reported *as part of the EU*. It’s the same with many other spatial datasets and surveys in Wales, many have just not been updated and now without EU funding/kicking them up the backside, they are woefully slow in updating them.

    The Wye highlights both the ineffectiveness of water and environmental regulation (cross-border), and also the massive gap in funding the devolved countries have in tackling problems when Wales can’t even fund an accessible catchment map or annual environmental survey.

  5. I’m sure the lawyers on all sides will make a few quid. But, it is not a substitute for government regulation and enforcement.

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