What can citizen-science do for our rivers?
Spring has come to my little stream bank by upper Norton Brook where Bache Dingle joins the stream down from the Herefordshire border on Stonewall Hill. The wood anemones, townhall clock, and golden saxifrage are just showing. This is where I go each week to test the water for temperature, electrical conductivity, turbidity, nitrate and phosphate, with both test strip and fiddlier Hanna pocket colorimeter. I have watched the floods reshape the stony promontory where the waters meet over the last 8 months and I have occasionally seen the usually clear water suddenly turn to a thick reddish-brown like over-stewed tea, after heavy rain.
Like hundreds of others, I am a citizen scientist volunteer engaged in the Wye Catchment Water Quality initiative. I’m also secretary of the Brecon and Radnorshire Branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales. Radnorshire Wildlife Trust has been a key player, campaigning for a better freshwater environment in the Wye and playing an increasing role in the citizen science project.
The local citizen science initiative was born in 2020 with the emergence of “Friends of the Upper Wye”. My CPRW experiences made me keen to join a group of concerned residents, mostly from around Hay-on-Wye. While we were exploring basic phosphate measurement with the aim of setting up a citizen’s science movement to look at river water quality in the Wye, Cardiff University School of Earth and Environmental Sciences was applying for a PhD Research project in Citizen Science Water Quality monitoring. This was certainly a happy and fruitful meeting of interests, but I wouldn’t call it a “coincidence”. The decline of river quality and wildlife was reaching a tipping point. The grumbling disquiet was ratcheted up by the national and local press attention to the unprecedented “pea-soup” algal blooms in the Wye (May-June 2020) and still-unexplained major fish-kill in its Llynfi tributary (July 2020). These fed public disillusion with statutory solutions.
The debate accelerated when NRW published the long-awaited results of their water quality monitoring in the Wye Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Although both Powys County Council and NRW had previously insisted there was no problem in the Welsh Wye catchment, they suddenly announced that two thirds of the Welsh Wye is failing water quality targets. NRW said they had found no connection between intensive poultry development and phosphate pollution. All the same, they seem to accept the modelling which suggests that diffuse agricultural pollution is responsible for over two thirds of the problem in Radnorshire. Unregulated human sewage outflow is the major factor in phosphate pollution in some parts of Britain. In sparsely populated Radnorshire it plays a lesser, but still unwelcome, role.
‘SAC’ is a high-order designation, protected by law, for preservation of listed vulnerable natural species. For the Wye, it depends on the abundant water-crowfoot (Ranunculus sp.) habitat of which over 90% has been lost in recent years. For favourable status, averaged phosphate records for the separate river stretches should be below set thresholds. The theory is that this is the best measure of pollution damage to ecological systems from excess nutrients although all agree this an imperfect proxy among many pollution and climate factors. Authorities on both sides of the border had always ignored river phosphate levels in planning because there was a cross-border ‘Wye Nutrient Management Plan’ to control these. However, in 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that you could not rely on such a plan when it was not succeeding. The implications of this seminal ‘Dutch Case’ slowly filtered into English and Welsh Planning so that development in the catchment of a failing SAC must be refused unless it can be proved it does not bring added phosphate. This has caused consternation because it rules out housing and some agricultural development but stakeholders in the plan simply cannot agree on reliable enough solutions.
The Wye citizen science movement has developed against this shifting background. Cardiff contributed an expert water biochemist (Liz Bagshaw) and algae expert (Dr Rupert Perkins) to oversee a structured program, run by an experienced PhD student (Elle von Benzon) to design and implement citizen’s science throughout the catchment. Elle’s extraordinary mixture of broad vision and attention to detail led us through the choice of tests and equipment, a platform to record data, and the recruiting and training of volunteers.
Soon after the start of these collaborative sessions, it became clear that a critical sub-catchment would be left out. FOUW and Herefordshire Campaign for the Protection of Rural England were covering the main Wye and tributaries down to Monmouthshire but wouldn’t take in the Welsh Lugg/Arrow catchment. The English authorities were blaming pollution from the Welsh Lugg for the failed phosphate status of the English Lugg SAC. An emergency meeting with James Hitchcock and Sarah Woodcock from Radnorshire Wildlife Trust set up ‘Friends of the Lugg’ (FOL) as a partnership between our CPRW Branch and the Wildlife Trust. Essential insurance and health and safety training for all volunteers in Wales was a sticking point, with RWT coming to the rescue again, for both FOUW and FOL.
As FOL, FOUW, Herefordshire CPRE, and the Wye Salmon Association moved through the Cardiff program, we began recruiting volunteers. Now ‘Friends of the Lower Wye’ have joined in further downstream around Monmouth. Sarah Woodcock, Phil Ward and I set up training sessions by the Lugg in the lovely Presteigne community buildings at Went’s Meadow. We now have 40 active volunteers monitoring a total of 40 sites and we have nearly 8 months of data recorded on Epicollect5 - an open data program. Phil’s kick-sampling of invertebrates was a highlight of the sessions.
Our big question is what can we citizen scientists bring to the table?
Natural Resources Wales monitors a few set sites infrequently whereas citizen scientists monitor a lot of sites frequently and the data is immediately available. NRW publishes conclusive results long after the recording period. Water Watch Wales is showing Water Framework Directive results for 2015-2018. The Wye SAC Compliance Report uses data from 2017 to 2019, so these conclusions, already based on limited data, are out of date in a fast-changing environment. Our scientific measurements should be able to demonstrate recent patterns that are only accessible through better coverage and frequency, but we must accept that these are not lab certified. We also get out there and look at the streams and rivers. Hundreds of people are learning about local weather events, wildlife, land use, soil erosion, and pollution episodes through direct experience.
We have found differences in our measurements throughout Radnorshire and NRW has said they would like to collaborate with citizen scientists but have not told us how, so enterprising volunteers are making a start with data analysis.
Mott Macdonald, a major consultancy, is using its social responsibility fund to help us ensure validity of our data and is working on a programme to analyse and present these. In the meantime, River Action, a national campaigning group, has raised over £30,000 through crowdfunding for RWT, to help FOL and FOUW with a RWT post for one year to help administrate our growing program and purchase the next round of equipment.
Now we are setting up an overall organisation of citizen science groups across the whole Wye Catchment to press for cross-catchment support and a plan from the environment agencies on how to co-operate to make our efforts work to save the Wye from ecological collapse.
In its course from the Welsh uplands to the Severn estuary, the Wye receives all the consequences of the politics and human activities on both sides of the border. The Recent UK Environmental Audit Committee Report called for full co-operation between authorities across the border to reverse the decline of the Wye. But we see no practical results of any co-operation between England and Wales. This would involve the National Governments, their respective environment agencies and all the planning authorities on both sides of the border.
All the statutory bodies and land-use stakeholder groups in the Wye catchment sit on the Wye Nutrient Management Plan Board, but the plan itself is so stuck that Herefordshire Council has just declared that it has reached stalemate and needs unlocking by a special commission. Powys County Council and Natural Resources Wales made no comment.
The causes of ecological decline in the Wye are complex. Climate change, agricultural and sewage pollution, plastic and chemical waste and pharmaceuticals all play their part. This is why we need evidence and solutions, not buck-passing and arguments. The citizen science movement has given ordinary people an insight and voice in what is happening to our rivers.
We need to make sure this counts
- Christine Hugh-Jones
