Tag Archives: Pollution

Water Quality Update

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By Colin Nicholson

Swimmers enjoying the water at Waldringfield January 2025

There continues to be much local and national interest and activity about the water quality of the River Deben.  This interest has led to a huge increase in knowledge of what is going on where, but there remains much to learn.  Below is a personal perspective of where we are now and further activity.

Introduction  – “What is the Water Quality of The Deben?” and “Can I swim in the Deben?”

“What is the Water Quality of The Deben?” and “Can I swim in the Deben?” are questions that are often asked.

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Help clean up our beaches

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by Kate Osborne

I remember the first time I ever saw someone collecting rubbish from the beach. It was a beautiful white sand cove in Corsica. What struck me as odd wasn’t the fact that he was stark naked (it really was a deserted beach!) but that he was carrying a torn white plastic feed sack and he was using it as a sling for all sorts of other litter. I’m ashamed to say I laughed – whether inwardly or outwardly I’m not sure – but I’m still friends with him and the rest of his family, so it can’t have been that obvious.

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AGM Report – Essex and Suffolk Rivers Trust – The State of our Rivers Report

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The East Suffolk Rivers area of 1,364 km2 encompasses the valleys, waterbodies, tributaries and estuaries of the Rivers Gipping (Orwell), Deben, Alde and Ore, Thorpeness Hundred, Yox, Blyth and Lothingland Hundred.

This area is mostly rural with significant urban areas at Felixstowe, Ipswich, Woodbridge, Wickham Market, Stowmarket, Saxmundham, Halesworth, Southwold and Kessingland.

Agriculture is the predominant land use (root veg and pig farming in the east and arable). Other pockets of land-based industry exist, including food processing, milling, malting and the manufacture of farm machinery and fertilisers.

The attached report by the Essex and Suffolk Rivers Trust looks at the current state of these Suffolks Rivers.

 

Overview of Sewage Overflows

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By Liz Hattan

The East Anglian Daily Times recently published an article on sewage overflows into Suffolk rivers (October 26th 2021), highlighting those rivers with the highest number of spills in 2020.  The River Deben had 40 spills at its Deben Road overflow, totalling 18 hours. Other rivers such as the River Thet fared worse with over 1100 hours of spills at Badwell Ash, and some sites in the other parts of the country have seen thousands of hours of spills (see Rivers Trust interactive map for local data ‘Is my river fit to play in?’  https://arcg.is/19LiCa).  Nationally, the number of spills is high with over 400,000 monitored spills (around 3.1million hours) in 2020 into English rivers and many more unmonitored ones.

So why are there are so many spills, why does it matter and what is being done to address the problem? This is a high profile issue with considerable political, media and public scrutiny. This article looks at some of the challenges. Continue reading →