Why England's Chalk Streams are Dying
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- David Attenborough said that England's chalk streams are the UK’s rainforest and should be protected; however, over the years, rivers have been drying up and unable to flow consistently, causing an ecological disaster.
One of the most significant contributors to this disaster is the Water
Companies who have been abstracting water from the Chalk Stream aquifers to supply residents with water very cheaply; however, the over-abstracting has caused the chalk streams to dry up. Not only does the wildlife die, but the sewage that flows through the rivers has nowhere to go, meaning high phosphate levels.
In this documentary, I wanted to highlight the plight of the chalk stream. I wanted to see what caused it and whether we are right to blame the water companies or if there are others to blame.
Instagram - / johnhorsfall
Music
“Rand Aldo / Rose-Colored Faith courtesy of Epidemic Sound”
“Coma Visions / Martin Klem courtesy of Epidemic Sound”
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A really important short. Thank you for the time and effort. Highly informative and depressing.
@@OrganicDad glad you enjoyed it
Calling an 8 minute video a short. Sign of age.
Sign of our attention spans dwindling lmao
@@johnhorsfall I don't think it's something we should enjoy. Again thank you for this important reportage.
Privatization never ends well, just like private healthcare in America is a disaster so is private management of the public trust.
@@johnhorsfall I'm an Australian Engineer and I find this story sad but also fascinating because the root cause of the problem is identical to things happening in Australia and not just our rivers but across our entire economy.
Back in 2016 I found out how bad out power industry was going and NOBODY wanted to do anything and we still haven't other than politicians causing all sorts of public arguments.
What I saw was very similar to what I was experiencing as an engineer at work. I did a degree in aerospace but work in industrial control systems which are the sensors & computer systems that run things. I've worked in manufacturing, mining, water treatment and other areas. They all have a similar NEGATIVE aspect and that is the interference in all decisions by people with degrees in economics or degrees with a significant amount of economics. Everything has to have a business case and that case has to explain how what you want will make more money.
The moment you pointed out that this problem traced back to Margret Thatcher and her privatisation schemes told me what the problem is because I have traced Australia's issues back to the same thing. Margret Thatcher believed in Milton Friedman and the Chicago School economists at the University of Chicago. In their ideology governments can do nothing right and the private sector is the solution and the free market can solve any and every problem.
There's a giant double flaw in that Chicago School mentality and that's what if the market is not free and fair or if there is no viable business solution. Where this is most obvious is with water and electricity. First there is no way to have either of these systems act in as a free market. Yanis Varoufakis (the Greek Economist) points out there's only 1 pipe running down your street for water, only 1 pipe for sewerage and only 1 set of power lines for electricity. So there's way to have the choice that Milton Freidman based his ideology on.
Secondly if there is no viable business model to solve a problem then it never gets solved. This is really obvious in power stations. There's a great business model for buying then once they are built *BUT* there is no viable PRIVATE INDUSTRY model for building them. My favorite example to illustrate this is Hinckley Point C. It took 7 years to design and approve, will take 10 to build & commission and take at least 8 years to pay off and start making money. YES it will eventually make a giant pile of money over the 70 years it will operate but those first where NO PROFIT is made make it utterly unviable as an investment. No 55 year old executive is going to sign off on £35 Billion and then not see anything until they turn 80.
There is one exception to this and that's the state owned enterprise. Hinckley Pt. C is owned by the French State Owned company EDF and a similar Chinese state owned company just like one of Thames Water's main investors is the state of Queensland in Australia. Such enterprises do not have to care about short term profits they have to care about the long term profits. Hinckley Pt. C will return so much money to the people of France that it will pay for the next 4-6 power stations they build.
YES this is the real legacy of Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the other Milton Freidman acolytes. She not only ended up destroying your chalk streams but she put in place an economic ideology that will see the British people paying for at least 4 giant nuclear power stations in France and probably a couple on China.
Sorry to be the bearer of dim news.
But I do understand your plight because we have the same issues here in Australia and the cause is the same economic fantasy that we also need to dump.
I am 44 years old, lived within a mile and a half of a chalk stream.
We have been complaining about this happening for over 30 years, and only now are people actually admitting that it’s a problem.
Nobody wants to hear about it until it affects them
I'm a new graduate in Engineering and did my project on chalk streams, namely, monitoring their health with robots and sensors. I was left dumbfounded by the evidence in Gov and how backwards they are going on fixing the issue (they're not).
And if they stop extracting any more water and source it elsewhere, how long will it take to replenish?
I have no idea, guess it will take longer to refill than extract but who knows?
Even our shiny new Labour government is closer to Thatcher than was the Conservative government of Heath.
We need reform, but we absolutely do not need Reform.
We'll probably end up with something worse.
@@mordsythe yes, it’s the Angelsaksisch model:” the winner takes all- let us rape and burn society “.
@@mordsytheAh, the classic equation: more people = more water. It’s like saying, “More Kardashians = more drama.” Truly groundbreaking stuff, my dear Watson. 🕵️♂️💧
@@LengyDZ I’m not sure if you’re trying to belittle my statement of fact or just trying to make a funny…..
Either way… ya missed the mark on that one Inspector
Water privatization in the UK was and still is a mess and acts as a warning example for a bunch of other European countries not to repeat the same stupid and greedy decisions.
Your government was just following the same stupid decisions of mine under Reagan.
It's our fault as usual
@@bagel3703 Less-so following, moreso that Thatcher and Reagan are both the architects of Neoliberalism, and the disaster of mass privatisation is their legacy.
And whilst Britain suffers from privatization of pulblic duties and slowly return it, Germany discuss privatization of public duties…😂😂…. Same with Brexit… what a nonsense…..
@@frankangermann6460
Don't you think that having British domestic policy decided by unelected failed German bureaucrats might have something to do with Brexit?
Or the fact that the British public were never allowed to vote as to whether or not they wished to join in the first place?
It's a good thing that the EU doesn't have a massive lobbying industry that surrounds it, with countless examples of the revolving door and private-public partnership, making it grossly captive to industry interests and private profit I guess?
Turns out selling your vital natural monopoly to a bunch of hedge funds is a crap idea
In a literal and metaphysical sense XD
So the privatization of fresh water Leads to overextracting freshwater from the acquirers, while the privatization of sewage leads to sewage is lead uncleared to rivers…. So it’s a double fuckup for the river….😢
Filling our rivers and streams with sh*t can't help.
@@evaflowervines9520 kills so much when it happens
Litter is everywhere, people coming to this country hate the land & they don't give a sh1t about the rivers an canals either...
nor the wildlife & they certainly don't give sh1t about you either...
Just the free meal ticket 🎟
Private companies rarely if ever care about anything other than transferring profit to their share holders. Nothing important should be handed to private enterprise as it just never works out well.
Thames Water being the major example
This is a tragedy. I`m in Scotland and longed to fish some of these places when I was a young angler.
There should be no price high enough to pay for the destruction of any natural environments, never mind these precious streams. Words cannot describe the contempt I have for those profiting from this, and the sorrow for all affected.
Same here, used to watch tapes of fly-fishing chalk streams when I was a kid, I put it on my list of "to do", it's vers sad, it's like everything else in the UK
Have a look at what Harrogate Water (plastic bottled water company) is doing to the aquifer in Harrogate, the business was sold recently to Danone and they have increased extraction and are trying to expand the plant into a protected wooded area. There has been no limits placed on the amount of water extracted. They are draining our precious resources and water level and soil moisture in the area has plummeted as the push production for profit.
A blanket ban on Harrogate water !
In my MBA instruction, the very conservative and right leaning profs said that "natural monopolies" like water, streets, sewers, healthcare, ... would be abused if in unregulated private hands. Given government capture by business in many first world countries, there is little hope of effective regulation of private companies. The only way to prevent these abuses now, is to return control to the government sector.
Govern me harder daddy 😂
You a commie?
"very conservative and right leaning"??? Blimey you couldn't have gone to university in the UK then!
@@LastTrueConservative-or4ps obviously a bot
Govern me harder daddy 😂
@@freshdonkey1760
@@johnallen7807 You've just been brainwashed into believing the new definition of conservative based on the right wing radicals of reagan and after. Radical is by definition, NOT conservative.
In the US, we have something called the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is a semi-government agency that controls the navigability of trade, wildlife parks, hydroelectric dams, flood mitigation, and other electrical generation within the Tennessee Watershed. This is basically a government owned non-for-profit company strictly monitored by the government (and the people) in place of an actual governmental organization. Works pretty well for the culture here. Perhaps Cambridge could come up with something similar.
Also, the TVA is NOT allowed to sell electricity directly to the public. They MUST sell to other providers (usually city owned or local monopolies) who deal with the public. Such a system provides tension similar to private competition that drives down prices.
The US are like the least good exemple to take on anything about environnement. 😂
Water is an existential resource, privatising it is mentally insane.
How much do you have to hate your country to invest billions into defense, just to give up your water rights willingly.
Water, infrastructure, transportation, defense, postal services, healthcare. All those things should never be private
What do you think would happen if it was owned by the government? They wouldn't extract drinking water?
Why? Why do you think an inefficient state bureaucracy that doesn't have to perform, is better than a private company? The Netherlands privatised their water companies, no trouble there.
Trouble definately starts if the 'private' water companies are in fact still de facto state bureaucracies, subjected to violent policy swings with government bureaucrats insisting on cheap water, while also having shareholders so government bureaucrats can say they sold it all and raked in billions of private investment.
If you disagree. Have two people sit in a rowing boat and each rows in a different direction, see where it gets them.
Exactly: Water companies shouldn't be a corporation that is required by law to give payouts to shareholders, nor should they be state bureaucracies slurping up billions of taxpayer money. Look to the east: The Dutch privatised the water companies, it worked well.
Except in Amsterdam where Labour'esque fringe leftwingers glued extra regulations on top of Waternet, resulting in a 35% price hike in a single year for the whole region. They went through 5 directors in 2 years, all recruited from a pool of Labour'esque leftwing cronies from the GL-PVDA party.
@@mrECisME They wouldn't extract profit. Think about it.
@nvelsen1975 😂 Conservative and right-wing parties are anti regulation, if you want private enterprise to do the right thing you have to regulate, look no further than the "land of the free" USA anti regulation red states , it's one fucking environmental disaster after another. You cant drink petrol mate , clean and abundant water ,soil and air are essential to life. Sighting one example in the Netherlands is not proof of the "success" of private enterprise.
Given a chance the greedy Conservative will always put money and themselves first it's no revelation mate .
The Netherlands is tiny with big neighbours to buy from, what a rubbish example considering the UK should be self sufficient for water.
When are people going to get right with the idea that private companies will never, ever be responsible stewards.
In capitalist system, it's literally a contradiction in terms.
.
It's not the company's themselves, it's leadership and that can change
@@kingjellybean9795 companies are DICTATED by profit. They cabnot change.
@@kingjellybean9795 a corrupt system will create more corruption, no matter the leader put in place.
Capitalism isn t able to manage common assets (water, air, big infrastructures, etc...), no matter the leaders in charge.
@@kingjellybean9795 sweat pea the management aren't going to change into people who put the environment and community first. Under capitalism the only mangers hired are ones that make money, if they put it people who cared then the company wouldn't be as profitable and then a competitor who didn't care would get the investment and take the business. It's not just some bad eggs, don't be daft.
Under Communism the Aral Sea was drained. You can see boats in the middle of the desert now where there was once a fishing industry.
In Scotland water services are public owned and it works grand, and while im tempted to say it's just a matter of it being privatised I think it's probably more to do with the fact England is not that much bigger than we are by landmass but has about 10x the population. So the pressure on all these resources and ecosystems is going to be very high there, all kinds of contortions of these processes are likely to be necessary to keep up the carrying capacity. Can't go hell for leather towards economic growth in a small country like that and not run into these problems I suspect.
Well, the astronauts on the ISS are capable of living with a closed loop water system. And many places on Earth are doing the same thing. It is simply a matter of closing the loop so to say. The water can be purified and recycled, of course this will take some energy but building a few solar panels, wind turbines, or a nuclear power plant would easily solve that. So, much less water would need to be extracted, and you could achieve zero liquid discharge (all the sewage would be turned into water or a solid wasteform).
@@placeholdername0000 The principle seems fine enough but I'm not sure how achievable it would be. You would have to significantly expand and improve the water treatment infrastructure in England which would amount to quite an expenditure. That would mean private companies putting up their prices, or alternatively if it was taken into public ownership, the spending would be either felt by the public as tax rises or neglect in other areas that the funding was taken from. All at a time when bills are overwhelming for a lot of people. I think decision makers would struggle right now to convince a great deal of the English public that they had to pay a chunk more money instead of just carrying on dumping sewage into watercourses which most don't understand the value of anyway (I do see the value in them, just saying I doubt the average person does to the same extent).
@@user-yf6nd4sn3k I'm not saying it will be cheap to do. I'm just saying that it is what we willing increasingly need to do. However, if the profit of the water network is eliminated, that would help to control costs.
In Scotland combined sewage overflows are beyond control, most the network isn’t monitored and the few sewage monitors that do exist, don’t work, Scottish water is a joke
@RickyBobbyNASCARLOVER Don't know about that, but I do canoe and fish in a lot of lochs and rivers and swim in the sea in the north of Scotland and only once at Ardersier did I notice any kind of sewage.
Thatcher's conservative mantra, "Wait and see" until damage is done
just wait and see the damage the labour party dose :)
@@xelthiavice4276Damage to corporations and landlords is a *good* thing, though.
@@dregenius maybe if you are a freeloader. plus you need to read up on their manifesto
@@xelthiavice4276 The worst freeloaders I know are people who exhibit sociopathic rent-seeking behavior - buying up something that's both essential for survival and in limited supply with no intent of using it themselves but rather to extract a recurring rent not in exchange for recurring labor output or value generation, but for the temporary use of that resource they hoarded - *that* is what freeloading looks like.
Trump & Maga’t Republicans take a “See nothing, do nothing” and then Brag about how great of a job they did approach.
We need to reverse Thatcher's selling off of the UK
@@MazHem water is complicated but needs investment whether in private or public ownership
@@johnhorsfall "water is complicated but needs investment whether in private or public ownership"
The experience has been that in private hands there is no investment. It's all abstraction of money via financial engineering.
Nothing is done to invest and maintain the water and sewage system. We have to take back control.
@@johnhorsfall It's true that public ownership doesn't automatically mean adequate investment, but private ownership has not meant investment for so long that it seems like being made a fool to keep it in their hands. At very least if it's in public ownership then the money towards it would go into public coffers for something or another, rather than going to the cayman islands.
@@MazHemit's hard not to agree
What they did would be akin to selling off our national forests to timber companies, then being surprised when they chop half the trees down.
When your main motive is profit everything else will be a distant second
I was lucky enough to live near a chalk stream growing up. I could see so much wildlife ,the beautiful clear shallow water was magical and it was a delight to see all the fish ,and water voles ,and birds. I am beyond sad at the destruction of our environment for what? a few people making a lot of money.
Heyo John! We met many years ago in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan and then ended up on the same ferry across the Caspian! Crazy to see TH-cam recommend your video out of the blue! Fantastic work on this channel wow. Power to the people, stick it to the man!
@@stuartneil3125 of course, such an amazing trip. What was it 3 days waiting out at sea to Dock in Baku!
Best YT comment I've read today
Watching from Tasmania Australia, sham policy and weak governments are sadly everywhere these days. Logging our forest here in Tas and similar water issues in the midlands of Tas due to farming etc.
Victorian here. We've finally banned commercial logging after 40 years of protest. On paper at least. There is STILL logging happening under the guise of Bush fire management, salvage logging in NATIONAL PARKS and illegal logging because "someone made a mistake". Unfortunately the timber industry has strong ties to the Union Movement (CFMEU - the F stands for forestry) and also organised crime. Money laundering works well with a natural resource who's value can be artificially controlled.
It's still going to be a long time before our forests are protected and even longer ( if ever) before our native grasslands are properly managed. What farming hasn't destroyed, the housing industry is building on.
As for Tassie, I don't know when it will ever be protected. Most Tasmanians I've met are old and conservative. They view the environmental movement with disgust.
In 7th grade ('98) we had to do a project on "pollution", being from the northern midlands I did salinity. It's caused mostly by poor land use and management and it degrades the soils, so it seamed right to me. My teacher told me that wasn't pollution and I had to come up with something new in a double period. Tasmanian's aren't the sharpest tools as a rule.
Everything is dying. Mainly us.
Feargal Sharkey (He was the lead vocalist of punk band The Undertones in the 1970s and 1980s) is a lifelong fly fisherman and has campaigned against the pollution of British rivers (particularly chalk streams). He has subsequently become a figurehead for the campaign to prevent water companies dumping untreated sewage into UK waterways and coasts, appearing on television news.
Shouldn't the video start with defining whatever a "chalk stream" is?
Aquifer that runs through the chalk layer. And comes from the porous chalk layer under their island up into springs that run into rivers.
I was gonna say the same thing. You would Engage unfamiliar parties better by doing this. Defining, stating it’s importance, then going into the video
Stream from Limestone sources
Shouldn't you watch the whole video before rushing to the comments section to whinge.
I didn't know what they were but do now because I watched the f'ing video
@@MartintheTinman how bout you stop complaining about very valid criticism, that’s not even aimed at you. ❄️
I can't take my son to play in the same water I played in as a child. My last MP was a tory bastard who allowed this.
The river darent was the lowest flowing chalk stream in the country due to over extraction by companies but it’s now recovered due to action
What is happening to all British waterways is absolutely UNFORGIVABLE. Our government has a LOT to answer for for not taking water companies to task. Water is essential for ALL life, therefore it should belong to the public, not the greedy private sector. Water bills should be massively overhauled so what we pay goes straight into what we need, like modernising sewage piping and treatment to prevent sewage being released into rivers and oceans. Water should also be charged based on your 'pollution rating', so companies, farms and businesses that pollute the most, pay the most.
What worries me about Keir Starmer's government is this 'promise' to build so many more homes, but forgetting that these homes will need access to drinking water, and sustainable solutions for waste water. Most urban areas are still reliant on old Victorian pipework, which is vulnerable to leaks and cannot cope with the demands of a modern world and an increasing population.
For something as fundamentally important as water, the way we treat this vital resource is unforgivably DISGUSTING.
Too little, too late.
They are dying because of greedy privatised water companies, ineffectual regulators and useless politicians....
Absolutely disgusting. Why have the polluters not been taken into account. It gives me anxiety. I fished these waters . Not now . If I take a shit in my neighbours garden every day I think I would be arrested and fined . Nothing gets done . The government are cowards and probably get back handers to shut up .
We can't let water privatisation run rampant!
it already has
Thanks for this. I lived in a village an hour or so from Cambridge from age 4 to 18. I remember a nearby chalk stream being a place of amazing beauty and full of nature. So awful to see what these companies have done and continue to do.
This is a gross oversimplification. I'm glad we're talking about this issue, but saying it's all the water companies is going to lead us down the wrong path in trying to fix it.
- A huge amount is abstracted by agriculture and they do so with far less regulation and oversight in place.
- When Pippa Heylings says that water companies are responsible for our rivers, that's plain wrong. They have the same duty as other permit holders to do no harm, but the EA is the responsible enforcement body. The Tories have cut and cut funding for the EA over more than a decade, so when abstracters, incl. water companies, over-abstract, there isn't the amount of testing and investigation necessary to do anything about it.
- People don't realise but the UK is a very water scarce country. Anecdotally that feels wrong, but we are. Chalk streams are often the first to show the impacts of climate change because they respond more intensely to dropping groundwater levels. While abstraction plays a role, so does climate change.
We can sit here and whine about water companies, god knows everybody loves to do that at the moment, but we need concerted action from government if we're going to address cross-cutting issues like this.
In 1800 the population of England was 8.3 million. Today it is about 56 million. No surprise water is in short supply. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
56million and keeping rising. That statistic doesn't help the water companies for one thing.
It's almost 70 million now.
I didn't even know that Chalk Streams were a thing thank you for spreading this knowledge
It's very simple, money.
@@Graeme_Lastname money talks
@@johnhorsfall 👍😃
Lack of knowledge care and understanding by poorly educated uncaring office based execeutives of river environments ..or any aspect of our natural world.
@@simonartley1645 Well said. 🙂
Corporations should be held highly accountable but consumers need to wisen up too
What does that even mean. No consumer did this, the consumer has zero option who the water company is.
@@Alex-cw3rz did i say consumers are to blame?
Every bad thing could be linked back to Margaret Thatcher..... she was the worst
Treat water as a basic need for all living things.
I live near a chalk stream that the local Thames Water-operated sewage treatment plant has been pumping untreated sewage into all winter. Hightime Ofwat stopped colaborating with and appeasing water company directors.
just look if nestle has bought any water rights recently. they are known to dry up water resources.
No selling water for profit that is legacy stuff
@@89volvowithlazers its not legacy. it happens all the time around the world still. Everytime i asked if nestle bought water reserve where there are issues it happens they bought some recently.
My dad works for Cambridge Water and from what I’ve heard, things aren’t exactly great internally. Lots of bickering and disagreements.
This isn’t surprising whatsoever.
Dad's day 2023... We watched a brilliant programme about the chalk stream beds of England.
Can't believe I'm hearing this 18months later.
Very important doc!
@@JasperGreig thank you so much Jasper
There are chalk streams on the Yorkshire wolds too. Part of the river Hull catchment. This film is important and we should all bang the drum regarding the destruction privately run corporations are wreaking upon our national resources.
No one seems to asking here why extraction has increased. The population has gone up by around 10m since 2000. I would bet this is a far bigger issue than regulation. After all the regulations have remained the same since privatisation but the problem with our streams keeps getting worse..
Interesting and honest video, thank you 😊 great to see you share a tweet from my good friend who runs cambridge hedgehogs, we both live close to cherry hinton brook, and it has been getting lower each year. Nine wells has almost dried up. We should treasure and preserve these delicate and rare ecosystems, not bleed them dry 😢 glad to hear Pippa standing up for these precious resources ❤
Wow, I had never heard of chalk streams! Sadly many streams are relegated to pipes and infill, streams are so important, water is life! Human greed is so ugly!
The Basingstoke canal at the Grayshott tunnel is as crystal clear as an ( unpolluted ? ) Hampshire chalk stream , but at its other end at New Haw is VERY green and murky ( no sewage dumping here ? ) ............. DAVE™🛑
@@davidfalconer8913 there are still a few that are ok but most are in terrible condition
The fact no mention of why the demand for water has skyrocketted over the past 30 years shows that the efforts to fix this will take no one short of Reform making this an issue on their platform for it to be seriously tackled. Sad.
@@ZontarDow the greens and lib dems have have actual plans to fix the issue, reform just has scapegoats who they pretend are the problem with everything, reforms plans to scrap net zero and remove regulations would make the problem way way worse
Why is that then?
The greens and libdems know what the problem is, and they're the only ones who have an actual plan to stop the problem, Reform are the opposite and want to stop all money going towards helping nature and the climate, and give all our natural resources to the the fat cats in canary wharf.
can i just highlight in northern ireland we have not 1 lake or river in good eco status because of agriculture run and untreated water from CSOs, NI Water is funded by the NI goverment and its no better than your private english companies, the goverment gave them free run to do this
Thanks for shedding light on this. Great video!
The culprits for pollution are the types of technologies embedded in the typical British street or city. A combined sewer network integrates pluvial water with sanitary water. These sewer systems are larger than a dedicated sanitation network, but during the rainy season the interceptor (main artery) is correct diameter until it reaches the CSO regulator. Where the output of the regulator goes directly to the treatment plant, the output is of much smaller diameter. It won’t accept much water than the dedicated maximum permitted wastewater output (contrary to the pluvial water) as this would dilute the bacteria over in the treatment plant and cause haywire and outbreaks. Instead, once the quantities surpass a critical threshold the CSO regulator will naturally begin to overflow diluted wastewater into a nearby water body (as per the engineer’s design). Things can be added to mitigate this such as interception via a retention tank or another sewer (which is the direction tideway is taking except their situation is a bit different with more variables). There are also other things such as looking at the nearby groundwater and pumping it away etc that could have an impact on the regulator trigger point miles away in the interceptor. Ripping up the roads and putting in dedicated systems seems intuitive, except that will cause citywide road closures.
We have 45,000+ miles of river in the UK. The general public have access to only 1,400 miles. Corporations will be the death of our rivers.
The river Chess in Buckinghamshire is just about holding on but is constantly being poisoned by Thames Water. The trout come back and then get poisoned again or the upper part of the river dries up.
Neither happened in the 1970s.
so out of curiosity what's the plan to get water to people? If extraction is reduced to below recharge rate then who loses the water? assuming that the water currently extracted is going to population centers.
The point is all the money that could've been spent on investment to make water sustainable was instead given away as dividends.
@@riaz8783how do you make it sustainable? The water level is what it is. You can't magically make more of it appear in the aquifers no matter how much money you spend
Very interesting and it seems like a fertile ground for corruption.....
There's a revolving door between the Environment Agency/Ofwat (The Water Services Regulation Authority) and the major water companies. CEO of a water company goes to work for the EA, head of the EA goes to become CEO of a water company, round and round they go, that sort of thing.
*The actual examples:*
Cathryn Ross, former Co-Chief Executive at Thames water, used to be CEO of Ofwat
Jonathan Read, Director of Regulatory Policy & Investigations at Thames Water, used to be Director of Strategy & Policy at Ofwat
Andrew Beaver, Director of Regulation & Assurance at Northumbrian Water, used to be Director of Strategy at Ofwat
Shane Anderson, Director of Strategy & Regulation at Severn Trent, used to be an Associate Director at Ofwat
Jonson Cox, Chair of Ofwat, used to be CEO of Anglian Water
&
Toby Willison, formerly an Executive at the Environment Agency, left the EA to become Director of Natural Capital & Environment at Southern Water (while it was being criminally investigated by... the Environment Agency)
Also, in 2022 alone, there were 130 declarations of interest (potential conflicts of interest) in water companies by staff at the Environment Agency, such as having shares in said water companies.
Not to mention, the Environment Agency's pension fund has over £23 million of shares and bonds across almost all of England's biggest water firms.
Take of that what you will.
I was hoping to see a Lord Sharkey of Derry in the departing PMs honours list but I guess is was too much to ask...
We need Feargal in the legislature. Eloquent. Sincere. Passionate. Knowledgeable.
They began to die when water was made a commodity..and it has grown worst with big companies greed....
Why not treat water extraction with the same prudence and care as we do the fishing industry? We should manage the amount of water extracted based on the available water flow and the pressure within our aquifers. This management is not just common sense but a necessity.
Those who extract water must pay for this precious resource and be subject to stringent limits on the amount they can take. By meticulously tracking their usage and payments, alongside the river's flow rate, we can ensure a balanced and sustainable approach.
This is, indeed, a straightforward concept. If businesses exhaust our water supplies, they will inevitably face their own demise. It is far more prudent to let such enterprises cease operations before they wreak irreparable harm on our ecosystems.
England, though great in stature, is modest in size. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that we place proportional emphasis on safeguarding our limited food and water security. These resources are not mere commodities; they are essential to our national well-being and heritage. We are all stewards of this great legacy that is our country, and it is our responsibility to ensure that it is passed on to future generations in an even greater state than we received it. Unsustainable practices that exploit our natural resources for profit cannot be tolerated. These resources belong to the people of England and to future generations. What true child of England, what guardian of this realm, can consider themselves truly English if they do not strive to make England better? We must protect and preserve our heritage with unwavering resolve
"This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.."
ofwat: "yeah we totally regulate the water companies. we regulate them so hard they keep giving our top brass cushy jobs!"
The title of this video could be shortened to "Why England's dying" and most of the points in the vid could be extrapolated to everything else in the country
It's incredibly sad to see the difference between the chalk streams in my area and those shown in your video. (Ours need help too, but yours are horrific) Absolutely disgusting. Thank you so much for highlighting this. We are the customers...not the shareholders! Where are the regulations?
The water companies need to be re-nationalised. They are contracted to provide the people with 3 essential services, to give us clean water, to clean the water and to protect the sources and they are not doing any of that. We’ve had whole towns unable to drink their tap water, we’ve had sewage dumped in the rivers and seas and they are damaging the sources. Enough is enough.
Too many people need too much water
The same people complaining about the over-exploitation of chalk aquifers also welcome thousands of immigrants to the UK every year. You can't have it both ways - you have to choose between nature and people.
I live a mile away from the chalk stream the river Frome. in 1994 I caught three large salmon weighing 34 lbs 10oz in an hour and twenty minutes. King Charles also fished this stretch as a guest or the riparian owner. Today this wonderful crystal-clear, gravel-bottomed river that was once heaving with life is dead. It is a muddy, silted canal with silted bottoms, dark, discoloured waters and little weed. There are no pike and only 8% of salmon eggs hatch. The reason - as I look out of my window to the south side of the river valley is brown - land sown with maize to make silage for the dairy industry. Unlike grass silage the ground is bare and washes away with every rainfall. The silt ends up in the Frome and has choked it to death
Too many new people moving to London? London grows and grows and grows...
Add it to the ever-growing list of other huge problems facing life on Earth this century. We're a species completely out of control.
In my area in Sunderland there used to three very active streams, there catchment area was to the west of the town but with the house building in the area they have almost dried. It's only with the wet weather we have seen them trickle again. That whole area sloped towards the east and in days gone by they would run into the North Sea.
Incredibly important subject. Very upsetting.
One tip tho. Stop the music if you’re interviewing someone with bells in the background in future. The sound effect was mental
Sewage among other problems,lack of cleaning out when rivers get chocked up with weeds or rubbish .
So sad to see what's happened to the land I left 54 years ago to live on the driest inhabited continent on the planet.
It's ironic that all these streams used to be salmon rivers, but overfishing ruined them, hence there wass no dead post-spawning salmon to die and fertilize the river. Same thing with the Eels. everyone had traps on their stretch and now they are a protected species. It'snot just the Water companies, but they are the worst of the bunch!
People speaking out against bottling companies is nothing new. Its major problem over in India where groundwater was already scarce before they showed up.
Problem is, the people buying bottled water vastly outweighs anyone not buying it. I work in a grocery store, and on a daily basis we go through about 10 metric tons of water a day of just one brand.
Renationalise the water,
Give mega fines to the water companies for polluting.
After all, with the many millions in profits they taking from the people......
But also we the people need to take our own responsibilities... by not dumping (pun intended) things into the sewers that shouldn't be.. things like oils (cooking, motor etc) , fats, chemicals (like pfcs, etc) chemicals that are harmful to the environment, paint, wipes, nappies, and many other things unmentioned....
Otherwise we'll end up in a Briton that has no water to drink, and we'll have to import to drink..
Or worse... we'll have rivers so polluted that nothing will live...
how could one privatize the life blood of all living plants, animals and fungi? we have seen what privitization did with farming, but luckily because of government action it has been largely fixed, but here there is nearly no government intervention.
I really think we miss the point in that, structurally, privatisation is incentivised to over extract. That means that you need a structural system that disincentivises over-extraction and environmental abuse. This doesn't mean state ownership of water, necessarily, but community-owned water cooperatives-mutuals. I'm not saying there is no regulatory role, but regulation alone isn't enough to ensure the exploitative incentive is removed. Citizen control over these resources is what is needed. What happens if, as with the current environment agency, it is an underfunded, toothless organisation.
1:35 are you sure that this hasn’t naturally converted into what’s known as a “seasonal watercourse”? I see no practical quantity of water for any plant to use, even in full flow.
Yea but there's some good news in all this: Stock prices are up so it's a real win for the investors. Also, fixing this isn't going to be a problem as the PR department are already hard at work producing a series of videos informing the public about just how much they care.
i often visit the Itchen estuary, every Friday evening, the sewage works lets excess into the Itchen, into the brackish end, when the tide is out the mud smells of sewage, not anaerobic decomposition. the local councilor is keen on stopping this practice, but there is more waste than they can deal with, with more people using it every year
All the water companies have been allowed to leverage the assets and take the cash, spending the absolute bare minimum on infrastructure - government knew that future infrastructure costs would be enormous which is why the sold them off but then didn't enforce the re-investment. Rather they colluded with their buddies in private equity firms and helped them gut the system
It's a regulation problem, so you can blame a group of politician's vote in parliament, which was probably paid for by a lobbyist. Water should be nationalised as part of essential national infrastructure, as should many other things. It should not be in the hands of private enterprise. It was a grave error to put health or natural resources in the hands of private companies, they will only ever serve their masters and try to increase profit.
I used to live in Winchester, and would walk by the Itchen most days of the week - fortunately it crops up many places in town, as it's rather splintered (as it should be!). Moving away from the South, I knew it was a privilege I was losing to be away from all the chalk streams... I didn't realise it was a privilege to be by the Itchen specifically too :/
They have signs up in the nature reserve to not swim in it, but there's no way the college students bordering the reserve don't take a dip, and I suppose they should while they still can!
I hope this can all be reversed.
Another nice chalk streams vid, but doesn't explain what the fix is - and there is a fix, it's called Chalk Streams First (look it up). The idea is that the water companies back off aquifer abstraction to a sustainable 10% of recharge, (Our river Ivel is in the top 5 of most abstracted chalk rivers at 53% of recharge). Ground water levels will then rise, the springs will run again and the river will have a natural flow all year round as it once had. Obviously the water needed for Public Water Supply still has to come from somewhere but it's not so hard to abstract the same water from the river much lower down and bring it back by pipeline. In our case, all the infrastructure to do this has been in place for nearly 50 years but, for their own reasons, the water companies choose to barely use it. revIvel is working hard to change this and two quite exhaustive studies have unequivocally proved CSF is a viable solution for the Ivel. The current battle is to get them to actually try it because the Water companies are World experts at delaying things they think might be, or become, commercially disadvantageous. If CSF works as expected for the Ivel, it will serve as an example of how all chalk streams might be saved.
Those rivers not being drained are used for sewers. England is the 8th. most densely populated country in the world... and more and more people are migrating here. You can't have a better environment AND unlimited immigration.
Absolutely spot on
So we have capitalism doing what it does best by profiting regardless of human or ecological damage yet somehow you manage to find others who have zero say or involvement to blame.
@@ed7353 blah blah blah capitalism. Start actually thinking about these issues rather than just blaming people owning their means of production.
People need water, an organisation is required to extract that water and deliver it to them. They need to get it from somewhere, and more people equals more demand. You support millions of people migrating to the UK, soon it will be 100 million plus and you think that has no consequence on the environment? Get real.
And if you want to talk about ecological disasters caused by economic systems take a look at the Chernobyl disaster and the Aral sea. Two major, irreversible disasters thanks to socialism. Somehow they managed to do it with no profit incentive.
Defining what a chalk stream is would have been helpful for those of us outside of the UK.
this is such an important topic and i hate to be a doomer but being from canada and seeing how much damage privatization has done, i have lost faith in the world... the next 30 years will be insanely terrifying
I am no fan of the SNP but I am eternally grateful we kept our water.
As a avid fisherman, we’ve gone too far and ruined all the things of worth
same problem as always. Share holders often aren't stake holder. Share holders keep the profits and have no consequences for their actions while the stake holders pay the real cost.
This is a really good quality vid and excellent reporting
Thank you so much for not blaming climate change for it.
The Government are the shareholders…🤦♂️
Too much abstraction, 'needed' because of not enough investment and too many people for the infrastructure we have... we need a government to fix these problems. 😥
This problem with underground water extraction is not limited to the UK chalk streams: it is a MASSIVE problem - WORLDWIDE!
Over-extraction for agriculture and drinking water is already way beyond critical in a lot of areas. And there is no fix in sight.
In 1970 the world population was under 4 billion: now it is over 8 billion! And still growing! So clearly, the problem is never going to go away: we are going to need to keep pumping more and more and more water to meet the needs of the population growth.
To be fair, I would rather have a couple dry creek beds than cut off the water supply for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
The rivers are absolutely disgusting England, the UK government should be ashamed of themselves
Now that we have a new government and a seemingly competent environment minister who genuinely seems to be a good and passionate man, I'm hopeful that things in our rivers and chalk streams will start to improve
We yes, let's see how things go when they've built 2 million houses, all using water shall we....
Water shouldn’t be for sale. Rivers and streams shouldn’t be owned by anyone
Why do all of the wests problems now always seem to stem from Margret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan?
Because they are both long dead ! Do you really expect them to blame anyone in government now, you know, the ones that can actually do something about it ?
Because those politicians' whole goal was to make it easier for businesses to make money by doing things that are harmful to society as a whole. Private profits, public costs. The whole point of government regulation is to stop powerful and profit-motivated people from doing things that are harmful in the long run or to the rest of society. There's a reason why businesses put out so much propaganda about why governments are corrupt, regulation is pointless, people should be free to do as they like without big daddy government looking over their shoulder, etc. They know the government is the only thing that can hold them to a sustainable and ethical standard, and the public has every reason to want it to.
It's getting a bit lame now, after all we've had nearly 35 years to do something about it if Thatcher/Reagan are really to blame. Blame is easy, but recognising ALL of the causes, admitting that they exist and doing something about them on the other hand is a bit beyond the ability of the 'expert' class that currently runs the UK. @@glennjames7107
The main problem that no-one wants to talk about is there's too many people!! We need to quench the thirst of an over populated country and water crops to feed us. It's easy to blame water companies and I agree there's much more they can do but I can't see how things can be fixed unless there's less of us or new technologies are developed.
Im from Canada, whi ever came up with the idea of privatizing water? Why would that ever be a good idea lol.