7/2/2023 0 Comments Sewage cleanupA petition on insisting that Price “did the most amazing job clearing the banks and dredging the bottom of the River Lugg” has so far gathered more than 13,000 signatures. He claimed that “nature has recovered” on the Lugg, as a sprinkling of grass has returned to the devastated banks. Speeding up rivers increases the flood risk: to reduce flood peaks, you need to slow the flow. He demanded that our rivers be “manicured”, using a photo of a razor-straight channel in the Netherlands to show what he wanted: “the water gets to the sea as fast as possible”. He is portrayed as a salt-of-the-earth type just trying to make a living, though the court documents reveal that he has assets worth between £21m and £25m.Ī farmer called Olly Harrison, with a substantial following on social media and YouTube, made a video supporting Price, in which he compared rivers to blocked toilets that needed “cleaning out”. On the Farming Forum, a popular chat site, opinion is overwhelmingly in Price’s favour. Photograph: Herefordshire Wildlife Trust/PAīut total ignorance rules. The channel is deeper, wider and straighter, which increases flow rate and volume as it approaches the road bridge which still provides a choke point for the water.” The praise Price had received from some local people “arises out of a total ignorance of the true impact of his actions”.ĭamage to the River Lugg shown in a photo issued by Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, December 2020. Price claimed he was controlling flooding, but as the judge pointed out, his “actions have made matters worse. He continued in the face of repeated warnings to desist and chased an official in his car for 12 miles, then hemmed him in, blocking the carriageway. As the judge remarked: “He has turned a traditional, tree lined, meandering river, full of wildlife, into a canal void of most life.” He had sent an 18-tonne earthmover into the river to dig out gravel, uproot trees and reprofile the banks, destroying the spawning beds of fish, trashing a 1.5km stretch of the river and polluting a further 7km. Last month, a farmer called John Price was jailed for a year and told to pay more than £1.2m in court and restoration costs for his massive vandalism of the River Lugg in Herefordshire. Instead of acting as giant sponges that gradually release the water they contain, the degradation of the uplands ensures that water levels fluctuate violently: one day a river might be in flood, soon afterwards its flow might be dangerously low.Īs rivers descend from the hills, they come under further assault. As they are burned, drained and overgrazed, their capacity for retaining water is reduced. They start with the extreme mismanagement of our uplands. But if it were eliminated entirely our rivers would still be dying. ![]() Sewage pollution is a massive and disgusting cause of rivercide in the UK. This problem, in turn, is reduced to the malfeasance of the water companies. ![]() While I’m glad to see this flood of public concern, there is a danger here: of reducing the issue to sewage pollution.
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