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.

Distasteful and unpleasant as the sewage problem undoubtedly is, there are worse things happening to our rivers from the point of view of wildlife.  First, there is the steady release of nitrates, phosphates and other chemicals from water treatment works during low flows.  During the summer in particular, these enrich the water with nutrients, causing algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of rivers and starve them of life.  But the biggest demon of them all is agricultural run-off.  Walk along any of the lanes around my village on a day like today when the heavens have opened, and they are running red with torrents tumbling off the surrounding fields, loaded with topsoil.  As well as degrading the farmland, this eroded sediment smothers plant life in rivers and can dramatically change the nature of the riverbed and the life it is capable of supporting.  It carries all the residue from fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, slurry and anything else that might have been applied to these fields.  It is a deadly cocktail of medicine that is killing our rivers, slowly but surely, year on year.

What can we do?  Well, the good news is that this is less hard than many of our environmental problems to solve, at least in theory. 

• First, the government has got to set some proper, challenging targets.  Waiting until the 2040s for rivers to reach an acceptable standard is simply not good enough.  Just like climate change, we need to step on the accelerator and give some backbone to the rhetoric.
• Secondly, we need investment.  Investment from the water companies, from government, and ultimately from us, who pay the bills.  The government has vowed to require water companies to invest £56 billion over 25 years to improve infrastructure.  All well and good, but look behind the headlines and it’s less straightforward.  Ofwat, the water regulator, has regularly put the breaks on plans to upgrade sewage treatment works and other infrastructure on the grounds that it will cost too much to the customer.  Powerful consumer voices have lobbied hard and successfully to keep bills low.  We need to take account of affordability of course, but there are smarter ways of doing this than simply blocking attempts to remedy the very situation that government and society agrees is unacceptable.
• Thirdly, we need to get tough – not just on the water industry, but on developers, land managers and anyone who causes pollution.  A study by the EA in October last year found that nearly 90% of cattle farms inspected in north Devon were breaching regulations and two thirds were causing pollution. Yet the number of prosecutions for water pollution fell through the floor from 2011 and over the following decade.  The EA’s recent investment in enforcement officers gives at last some cause for hope. 

The sticks can get us so far, but we desperately need the carrots too.  The government is currently rolling out the new Environmental Land Management Scheme.  This could be the best chance in a generation to provide the financial incentives that many farmers so badly need if they are to move towards more sustainable practices and conserve their soils better.  Sadly, the elements of the scheme announced to date lack the ambition or the payment levels to do this. 

Just as important as funding schemes is the provision of one to one advice to farmers, such as is delivered by Devon Wildlife Trust through Upstream Thinking.  By creating ponds and wetlands, farmers are doing a lot more than just providing valuable habitats – they are helping slow the flow and keep water out of overloaded sewage systems.  Schemes like Upstream Thinking urgently need to be expanded and rolled out across the UK.

It is not too late to save our rivers.  But we need more than alarming reports, angry rhetoric and finger waggling.  We need systemic change at every level, backed up by proper funding and enforcement.  Ultimately, we need to be prepared to invest more as a society in looking after the rivers that we love, and that we cannot live without.  That might mean some of our bills go up – but in the long term, the investment will pay us back many times over.