We live in a landscape that is largely artificial - even our remotest moorlands have felt a heavy impact from human hands, past and present. But somehow the rivers which scour their way through the primeval guts of our incalculably beautiful county seem timeless and unsullied.
Devon has every right to feel proud about its rivers. The upper reaches of the Dart, Exe, Erme, Avon, Tavy, Teign, Bovey, Okement – to name just a few – are among the most natural of any you’ll find in southern England. 23 rivers drain from Dartmoor alone. There are savage rivers like the Plym where flood waters hurtle down at breakneck speed after heavy rains, lazier ones like the Otter where water gurgles smoothly through lowlands, wide estuaries like the Exe packed with thousands of over-wintering birds.
You’d think we would cherish these rivers. After all, they provide us with vital drinking water, sustain our agriculture and are one of the main reasons that Devon is one of the most visited counties in the UK. But you’d be wrong. Not a single one of our rivers in Devon comes close to achieving good ecological status – the standard set for rivers across Europe.
If you want to know why, a good starting point is today’s report from the Environment Agency. On average in 2022, raw sewage entered our rivers and seas 824 times per day. Looked at another way, that’s sewage pouring into rivers and coast for 1.75 million hours. And if that sounds bad, it was considerably worse in 2021, largely due to heavier rainfall. This shocking pollution is not the result of one company’s sloppiness or a series of bad accidents. It is routine, and every water company has been found to do it on thousands of occasions – in the case of United Utilities, over 69,000 times. Each of these discharges carries human waste, sanitary products, microplastics and a cocktail of pathogens.