Massive thanks to you all - you did a fantastic job, and the technical demands must have been huge. So glad the weather treated you nicely too! I'm very proud to have helped fund this project, and let's hope it's a major force for positive change. Goodness knows we need some of that at the moment.
Thank you George & team & the heroes, Benjamin, Fergal & Karen. No excuses please from any of the authorities, ministers or those in power. Inexcusable!
George, this has been going on for over 20years now, I used to work for Welsh Water as an engineer back in the early 1980,s,but then all the Water Agencies were State Owned , and were well funded and were not a for profit organisation, but that all changed when Margaret Thatcher started the process of selling off to Private investors, which of course have shareholders who like to see a dividend! And that's the problem! Another major problem is caused by the farmers, who have been polluting the rivers for years with run-off from slurry , which is the excretion from cattle, also the farmers put on very high in nitrates fertiliser, which after heavy rain, runs off into the drainage ditches and eventually ends up in the rivers! When I was in the industry, there were very strict rules and regulations, to control the amount of pollution, and the rivers and streams were monitored regularly, but since privatisation this has gone out of the window! Everything has gone down hill since the Tories gained power back in 1979,they will cut everything to the bone to make money! And unfortunately I cannot see this trend ending anytime soon!
One of the primary reasons they sell off these National assets and companies is not because they believe it offers better service, it’s to finance trade deficit. I’m almost positive it’s the same as the reason they ‘build,build,build’ houses and warehouses and shit we don’t need.
Lack of funding in the Environment Agency. My sister works there. They cannot do the work due to lack of funds and staff. Also, a stupid number of chicken farms are approved every year. More and more. Powys County Council to name shame the worst offender...
@@abbikinghorn991 Hi Abbi, thanks for the reply, when I was working for Welsh Water, there was no such thing as the Environment Agency! But I digress, yes it seems there is a trend here, with the lack of funding, almost certainly due to the Tory government austerity programme, this is the party that's wants its cake, AND eat it! Can't believe how many chicken farms in that area! Are they supplying the whole of the British Isles! The area is of course dominated by the River Wye, and is a lovely place, but now it seems that Powis County Council has to share a large part of the blame for the poor state of the water in the river, but as usual they will deny any responsibility for the damage caused by the effuent from these chicken farms!🐔 Have a nice day Abbi 😊
The rules and regulations have become more strict over the years. It’s the enforcement that has dropped off. Water utilities are measured (amongst other things) on % of self reporting of incidents. It helps indicate how ‘honest’ they are.
@@davidmichaels8934 hello David, yes, I should have said national rivers authority, not the environment agency. My mistake. Now called something else. The Ithon river is DESPERATELY polluted. This runs through my town Llandrindod and joins the wye at Newbridge on wye I believe. The Ithon was a crystal clear sparkling river when I was a child 35 years ago.... Powys is a mess. The wye is still clean in Rhayader where I go to swim. Fingers crossed it stays that way? I wish I could do more... I want to get involved with CPRW as I have an environmental science degree.... So frustrating!
Brilliant programme that George managed to make entertaining despite the shocking subject matter. Loved the live format and range of people feature. Thank goodness for concerned citizens but let's get the authorities the funding they need too
I applaud every person in this video who send time and effort to improve the conditions of the Wye. I`ve seen and smelled the foul crap in person, I thought it was duck poo. If we can get rid of the polluters, our river can be a delight to us all and our children again.
Thank you for making this video. Shocking, horrible and just worrying, so worrying. I have started looking for ways to help and I hope all those that have seen this will do the same. I dipped my feet in the Wye when I was a small kid 50 years ago and I last swam in it this summer.
Good that your Welsh government representatives...have the courage to be interviewed. Though not surprised by the bravery, I'm pleased to see tradition and culture are strong. As a boy in Waukesha Wisconsin, I fished the Fox River. Old men would tell me stories of The Fox supporting a prized trout fishery. In 1981, however, the river was horribly polluted. Me and my fishing buddy would find culverts empting directly into the water. Smell was sickly sweet. Never did we eat the fish. Before moving to Alaska, I didn't know rivers could be crystal clear, clean enough to drink. Hope all goes well with your end of the world. Take care.
This needs to be aired on BBC one at prime viewing time! The general public should not buy the 'Happy Eggs' and should refuse to pay their water bills until they address problems discussed here ... Absolute scandal !
Lots needs to be aired on the BBC at primetime but it's not going to happen................................... The media take their name ffrom the greek goddess Media the goddess of illusion!!! No help there........................ people 'waking up' at last is the only way we obviously cannot rely on capitalism and govt to do it themselves there is and has always been a huge conflict of interests...................
we declared the rights of the River Cam on midsummer eve as guardians we are determined to stop over-abstraction, pollution and the massive unsustainable development of buildings and infrastructure that will kill our river in a few years if we are not successful. Solidarity with you all.
I missed the livestream, as I was away with family, but watching this back it retains its hard-hitting, tell-it-as-it-is, strength. I will be using this with my school classes in September - and telling a former colleague (who is now a Head near the end of the river Wye!) to make use of it too. Brilliant work by the whole team and special thanks to all the citizens who took part who were clearly not used to working on camera. I look forward to seeing the whole video go viral in due course - some school resources linking everyday things (like eggs and chicken meat) to the impacts would be a good addition (and happy to help develop these).
Thank you George and thanks too to all the contributors to this programme. . So sorry to hear of the pollution of so many rivers and streams in England and Wales - yes, it's either human waste or in many areas farm pollution. Such visual beauty in the countryside, to be polluted in reality like this is criminal. I live in New Zealand. "Clean, green" New Zealand. Sorry folks, 80% of our rural, lowland rivers are so polluted you're not advised to swim in them. In NZ the major culprit is, by a long, long way, intensive dairying. And as in the UK, no-one likes dirty rivers. And like UK it's still happening. Our present government is a bit more informed and with the Greens, there are some changes coming, very strongly resented by the superstructure of the industry, though that's a shame as there are good farmers trying to do things better. There are 6.5 million cows in NZ, there used to be 2 million, human population 5 million. 6.5 million cows produce the same amount of sewage as 60 million people. Sheep and beef farm conversion to dairy has produced those extra 4 million cows, one million of them in a place they never should be, the Canterbury Plains, dependent on huge amounts of irrigation to grow the grass and massive amounts of nitrate and phosphate fertilisers. The pollution and the urine seeps through the stony porous subsoils into the aquifers that supply drinking water in rural communities and Christchurch, NZ's second largest city., causing high nitrate levels, many times the level now known to be associated with increasing rates of bowel cancer, though lower than the much higher permitted levels in NZ - and NZ has the highest bowel cancer rate in the world. It's been sufficiently high at times for communities not to be able to use it in making up baby feeds, it causes blue baby syndrome. It's not just the rivers and the fish that suffer with pollution, it eventually returns to affect us humans. The first rule of survival in nature is "don't foul your own nest". Homo sapiens apparently still has to learn this lesson, both here and in regard to global warming, and likely too late to avoid some very unpleasant consequences An excellent resource on this matter here: www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/new-zealand-rivers-pollution-100-per-cent-pure/13236174. A couple of years ago, polluted drinking water with Campylobacter in Hawkes Bay, killed several people and thousands ill, many seriously. The source was a pond above a catchment contaminated with sheep faeces. Previously, the bores that provided drinking water in this area were so pure, that the water didn't need treatment. The same thing has happened with our drinking water in the Wairarapa four years ago, polluted by E Coli, almost certainly from cow faeces but here there was a failure in the UV treatment. Much drinking water around rural NZ is regularly contaminated in a similar manner.
Thanks so much. We have the Environment Agency 'head office' here in Bristol and have watched their slow decimation by successive recent governments. It must change!
Dear God, we have taken our eye off the ball big time. And the position has clearly been eroding over a number of years. This sort of thing doesn't happen overnight.
Its the same in Ireland unfortunately. Rivers and lakes are being destroyed by ever more intensified (dairy & beef) agriculture. We used to have over 500 pristine water (highest quality) bodies in the 1980's, now its less than 20. No-one seems to give a sh*t Well done George and crew for doing this
I noticed on a map I saw of intensive farms that there were lots in Ireland. Funny that they pick on Ireland, Powys and Herefordshire. Not the Cotswolds for example.
@@andrewtrip8617 Unfortunately we do know the true costs but while other countries have fossil fuel or car lobby's we have the agricultural lobby. Theyre very powerful here and very well funded and connected. Its an uphill battle with them.
Thank you to George Monbiot and everyone involved in manking this brilliant film showing the grim reality of how the rivers are today! It is a subject I have devoted a chapter to in my forthcoming book from Moon Books entitled Saving Mother Ocean. All this pollution and sewage is on its way to the sea!
I'm not sure I can say that I 'enjoyed' watching this as it's horrifying, but I'm really glad I did. Thank you everyone who worked on this for putting it out there.
An excellent movie with excellent research, this is a documentary you must watch! At a time when pollution levels in our rivers is clearly increasing, I find it impossible to believe that our government has no knowledge of what is happening and it's implications. As if that was not enough, government funding for the Environment Agency has been cut by more than two third's by successive governments since 2010 when it should be increasing, taking inflation into account the true cut will be far more than that. With huge cuts like that how can they ever be totally effective in their role ?
I have been an expatriate for twenty years now. Forty years ago the River Elwy (not far away) suddenly changed from a fast-flowing transparent brown (it drains from moorland) stream full of plants and mosses, and populated with salmon, trout, eels, gudgeons, minnows, a whole host of insects, swallows, bats, foxes, water voles, kingfishers, the whole list. The last time I saw it, a couple of years ago, it was a light grey trickle with ragged black flood-damaged edges, which hopefully didn't poison the open ocean when it met it. That you can let heaven turn to hell and not even notice for forty years is disgusting. Edit: I discover from the comments that it was the change in (abdication of) public responsibility brought on by M. Thatcher _et al._ How unsurprising was that.
The same happened to the river Pont, in Northumberland, which I fished as a child. I remember it as a fast.flowing, clean, clear river, full of brown trout, grayling, minnows, crayfish and eels. I used to regularly see water voles, otters and kingfishers. When I visited it after 20 years, it had been reduced to a slow, stagnant, trickle. The gravelly bottom had been replaced by an orange-brown ochreous sludge. I walked a couple of miles of its' length and didn't see a single fish. It is terrible to see what's happening to Britain's rivers.
This is fantastic ! Found the singing at the end giving me goosebumps and together with the footage of George alone by the beautiful river to be powerfull emotionally...we can do this people !!!!
Loved this. Not just for the content but the way the film was made. Found it really entertaining and memorable. Would be great to see more documentaries made like this
Thank you so much for doing this! I really hope to see more! We should ALL be enraged by how our planet is being destroyed for short term profits. Every country, all over the world. ALL of us. More and more of us are realizing it. More of us are feeling it. More and more of us are doing something about it. That gives me hope.
Thanks for an informative and balanced programme. Very cleverly produced to boot. Depressing, of course, but we must allow our eyes adjust to the darkness in order to tackle the issues that lurk in the shadows.
Really great documentary - well done to everyone involved. I was impressed with the ambition getting boats, cars and drones all involved on a live broadcast!! Great job, really informative. I’ve written to my MP and will look forward to further updates and how we can all do our part, however small…
Well done George Monbiot. I salute your determination to shine a light on all our dirty little secrets. I love the live documentary form and how you made it really interesting with all the different forms of contribution from interviews, poems , videos, maps etc. I can’t see a politician closing down a chicken farm, just have to stop planning permission for new ones. The maxim “polluter pays” should be applied to those farms. The price of chicken in the supermarkets does not reflect the cost to the environment. If you must eat meat, eat less, but of a higher quality. Just wondering if the chicken shit could be dried and bagged and sold as fertiliser at garden centres. If there’s so much of it, it could surely be profitable, even if it was collected and processed centrally rather than each farmer having his own plant.
Yes, it would be a good start to make the American corporation Cargill, who is profiteering from their intensive poulty 'units' pay for the damage they have done.
I was thinking about the collecting of the chicken droppings Kathy- why not put it to some good use while getting it away from where it does harm? If practical to remove from the chicken farms, then perhaps adding it to those public composting facilities (where they turn garden waste into compost) would make sense as well. That might be more feasible than closing existing farms down, as going about that might be difficult- how do you decide which farm gets the boot? The most recent ones? If we could calculate the amount of phosphate etc. that a chicken farm of any given size can make use of, then the excess can be calculated and required to be collected for processing. That would remove this problem of excess nutrients leaching into the rivers.
When you see a pollution I’d recommend calling the local water utility first. They are duty bound to attend in two hours (24hours a day) to check it out and essentially prove it isn’t them. They’re also equipped to take samples etc. I tracked down quite a number of pollutions than had nothing to do with the water company I worked for. The EA just aren’t sufficiently staffed.
@will lawson We don’t. What do you think the Environment Agency is for? Our shitty government just doesn’t think it’s a priority. It needs to be properly funded to be able to do what’s it’s mandated to. It’s like Sir Tom raising money to fund the NHS, it’s a damning indictment of our times and absolutely disgraceful.
I really love & respect George Monbiot, I don't know how he keeps his sanity! At least he's kept his sense of humour despite the world going to hell in hand basket. Where is the regulation to ensure the rivers are kept clean? He is "crying in the wilderness": those who have the power to make global changes to prevent climate breakdown like the culpable corporations and rich governments aren't listening. He's right: our world is run by psychopaths.
I had no idea this was a massive problem! Thank you for the in-depth information on why our rivers are so polluted. I have had the joy of the river authority and found them rather bazaar. Poison was placed in bate boxes around a pond in our local park, with poisoned dead rats lying around and in the water. Called the council, they turned up 6 hrs after helpers cleaned up the area and removed the bate boxes and poison, they also rescued a gull on the amber list caught up in fishing wire in the pond with fishermen shouting at the rescuer to get out of the polluted water! The river authority was alerted and declared they would come down on the council and the council lied and lied and declared there was no poison there in the first place. Photo evidence was provided, so the river authority came and visited the next day, to look at fishermen’s licenses, the newspaper claimed! That pond is a disgrace to wildlife, hardly any ducks and loads of people throw bread in the water to the few that are there! Do not feed ducks BREAD near the water! Take sweetcorn, seed, peas, plant based food that doesn’t harm the water. Do experiments with children and see what happens when you put certain foods in the water and see what happens to get an idea of the damage it causes. If you have bread, throw it away from the water. It is very sad to know and see how much damage humans cause to the environment and wildlife. We need to do better, so much better and it starts with you and why we should be eating a plant based diet 1. For the animals. 2. For the planet. 3. For your health 🌱
I have just found this, I am horrified. I used to visit the river for many years. My family lived just a short distance from there. I'll forward this, thank you.
Fantastically produced documentary. Well done George and the whole team involved. As several state in the documentary it is a truly heartbreaking state of affairs. Let's hope some of these inspiring individuals and this film can start to bring about some change. It's also just further evidence of the destructive practices intertwined with animal agriculture. The planet desolately needs our diets and food production systems to radically alter.
Brilliant exploration into this devestating truth ....my beautiful homeland :( But I feel inspired by the people in Ilkley, Yorkshire and other river success stories around the world
Top work from all concerned! The worst reaction would be not to care or try - thanks for the prompt to do what we can and get ACTIVE! And respect to the Welsh government for actually being accountable and appearing on your live stream. Keep up the good work trying to persuade people not to take this shit lying down!
Well done George, Franny and all involved. Its about time that we took back control via our consumption habits and force the govt to take action and take water and sewage out of private hands
Well done to all involved. The continuous stocking of fish in rivers shows that the natural populations have crashed on my local rivers which are full of algae in the summers. This plus abstraction are having devastating effects.
Well done for exposing this, to you George and your team. I'm passionate about my fishing especially the rivers and i have shared this to all my followers here and on facebook.
I'd also add, if there are a million chickens in this catchment, according to wiki, the average chicken produces about 4.5 kg poo per month, of which 0.5% is phosphate and similar amount nitrate and potassium. Both the former two substances are associated with pollution and eutrophication. If you do the maths, this is equivalent to around 324 tonnes of phosphate and a similar amount of nitrate deposited in the Wye catchment every year. That's equivalent in a different measure of nearly 50,000 x 20 kg bags of NPK fertiliser. Now it is almost certain that farmers are applying their own bought fertilisers to their lands in this catchment at times and as was observed in the documentary, when the amount is additional the plant or grasses growing needs it will run off or accumulate in the soils and eventually reach the drains, i.e. the river. The programme didn't discuss beef, sheep or dairying in the catchment at all, but I imagine there's a good deal which must also be contributing. Whatever the case here, it's a massive amount of pollution just from the chicken sh*t in anyone's reckoning.
Well done for noting that! That’s because countryfile is biased towards animal agriculture, which is the main cause of environmental destruction. The BBC should drop the programs advocating animal agriculture, well all tv stations should tbh! When 70bil animals are slaughtered a year, you know you have a massive problem. I don’t advocate cruelty towards animals and therefore save any environmental damage caused by what I eat and products I use and also, my poo is healthier and no animal fat is going down my drains causing fat burgs and contamination! Eat plants 🌱
@@Babycakes_2001 vegetable fat is a thing. It's still in your shit and still causes fat deposits to enter sewers. Fertilisers used on fields enter waterways. Pesticides used on fields still enter waterways. Deforestation for growing palm oil is huge business and doesnt involve rearing animals, but kills thousands in the process. Just because it came from a plant does not mean you should be guilt free. You'll also find palm oil in pretty much every off the shelf product in your local shop. Wake up and stop thinking you're perfect because you eat a plant based diet, you're just a bit less shitty than anyone who eats meat.
@@TigerLeadFont5 Eliminating the land, fuel use and waste of animal agriculture, and producing less waste yourself, are huge benefits of changing diet. You don't need to use vegetable oils either.
@@TigerLeadFont5 Palm oil. That is the ignorants argument as palm oil is in more carnists foods than vegan. Vegans are also ethical and want ethical products. It is well proven that animal agriculture is the main cause for forest destruction and crops grown. 70bil animals a year are slaughtered. They have to live eat and roam somewhere. Think about it. My guilt is lesser than ever before by going vegan. Perhaps one should look at their own guilt and try to be a better person by eliminating cruelty from their life 👍
Really scary what's happening to our rivers. It was one of the great advances during my lifetime - the cleaning up and restocking of rivers. I noticed today that the River Mersey in Stockport smelt horrible, like sewage, it hasn't smelt like that since the 1970s.
It would be useful to develop cheap, open-source testing equipment so that citizens can examine their local rivers. I'm thinking you could have a phone app using a microscope lens, would be interesting to see if using machine learning it would be possible to perform ecoli counts.
Everyone should take water samples from their local rivers as soon as they see something is wrong. Few hours later, will be too late. Document yourself taking the sample. Most of those can be traced to the specific polluter along the river.
Well done on the live broadcast. I particularly appreciate your including actions that people can take and especially the clear plan listed at the end. My particular angle would be that farming livestock is not a bad thing, it is the industrial methods. This applies to any farming, whether it includes animals or not. A relatively small number of animals in the farming system is probably the most regenerative and productive approach as we need a certain amount of ruminant dung for fertility (but not so much that it causes the appalling pollution highlighted in this broadcast).
The main cause of sewage treatment works like Mogden discharging untreated sewage into the Thames etc is the fact that over the mass of London, including all the 1930s housing, there is no separate Surface Water sewer system, which could channel and discharge relatively unpolluted water from roof gutters and road drains into the rivers. Instead, its discharges into the foul sewer system into which all the human sewage and restuarant and factory liquid waste goes and makes its way to the sewage works, like Modgen. The foul sewers weren't designed and still don't have the capacity to handle both the foul water and surface water together when the drains "Surcharge" with excess surface water during periods of prolonged heavy rain or flash downpours. Hence you see foul sewer covers "Fountaining" on columns composed of foul and surface water all the way along the route of the main sewers to the sewage works and places like Modgen, which can't cope with the extra input discharging it, untreated into the Thames. And if you live at the bottom of a hill . . . . best of luck. With global warming its only going to get worse. The big London super sewer is supposed to remedy this . . . . not without multiple new sewage works and a separate surface water drainage system. This has been going on years in London. Funny that we can get all that HS2 tunnelling "Rammed" through the planning and financing system using every trick in the book and yet decent adequate drainage and sewage treatment, a basic Public Health requirement for civilised life, eludes the "Initiative mongers"
We have decent drainage. We have over efficient drainage that completely overwhelms the system when we have a period of extended rainfall. We have major flooding all over the country regularly. If the rivers are flooding then they will not take anymore water from drains, it will all just back up into residential areas. It would take billions of £s worth of civil engineering works to try and remedy this, and it’s just not cost effective. Over efficient drainage of the land starts the whole thing off every year.
Brilliant video. I'm just drafting a email to George Eustice MP. I've worked in a country park for over 41 years. Seen lots of changes in that time to the woodlands, river flooding.
Mike Wilson, glad that you are doing something in the River Teifi area, back in the 1970 and early 1980,s we lived close to the Teifi in Cilgerran, even then as I worked for Welsh Water, there were problems but only usually after heavy and continuous rain, but it seems with this penny pinching Tory government the funding has been dropped, and the results are plain to see, hope the Teifi is going well 🙏
Excellent programme and long overdue. I suggest that Rivercide needs to learn from the experience of Client Earth who use lawyers to persuade governments to implement their own laws. Citizens action groups are also an excellent idea. .”Adopt a river “ as an objective.Good luck.
So many producers of meat have adverts that show a completely different view of meat production than what actually happens. Earthling Ed has a huge number of videos showing this.
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"Only when the last tree is cut, the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, will man see that you he can't eat money.”
Massive thanks to you all - you did a fantastic job, and the technical demands must have been huge. So glad the weather treated you nicely too! I'm very proud to have helped fund this project, and let's hope it's a major force for positive change. Goodness knows we need some of that at the moment.
Thank you George & team & the heroes, Benjamin, Fergal & Karen. No excuses please from any of the authorities, ministers or those in power. Inexcusable!
George, this has been going on for over 20years now, I used to work for Welsh Water as an engineer back in the early 1980,s,but then all the Water Agencies were State Owned
, and were well funded and were not a for profit organisation, but that all changed when Margaret Thatcher started the process of selling off to Private investors, which of course have shareholders who like to see a dividend! And that's the problem! Another major problem is caused by the farmers, who have been polluting the rivers for years with run-off from slurry , which is the excretion from cattle, also the farmers put on very high in nitrates fertiliser, which after heavy rain, runs off into the drainage ditches and eventually ends up in the rivers! When I was in the industry, there were very strict rules and regulations, to control the amount of pollution, and the rivers and streams were monitored regularly, but since privatisation this has gone out of the window! Everything has gone down hill since the Tories gained power back in 1979,they will cut everything to the bone to make money! And unfortunately I cannot see this trend ending anytime soon!
One of the primary reasons they sell off these National assets and companies is not because they believe it offers better service, it’s to finance trade deficit. I’m almost positive it’s the same as the reason they ‘build,build,build’ houses and warehouses and shit we don’t need.
Lack of funding in the Environment Agency. My sister works there. They cannot do the work due to lack of funds and staff. Also, a stupid number of chicken farms are approved every year. More and more. Powys County Council to name shame the worst offender...
@@abbikinghorn991 Hi Abbi, thanks for the reply, when I was working for Welsh Water, there was no such thing as the Environment Agency! But I digress, yes it seems there is a trend here, with the lack of funding, almost certainly due to the Tory government austerity programme, this is the party that's wants its cake, AND eat it! Can't believe how many chicken farms in that area! Are they supplying the whole of the British Isles! The area is of course dominated by the River Wye, and is a lovely place, but now it seems that Powis County Council has to share a large part of the blame for the poor state of the water in the river, but as usual they will deny any responsibility for the damage caused by the effuent from these chicken farms!🐔 Have a nice day Abbi 😊
The rules and regulations have become more strict over the years. It’s the enforcement that has dropped off. Water utilities are measured (amongst other things) on % of self reporting of incidents. It helps indicate how ‘honest’ they are.
@@davidmichaels8934 hello David, yes, I should have said national rivers authority, not the environment agency. My mistake. Now called something else. The Ithon river is DESPERATELY polluted. This runs through my town Llandrindod and joins the wye at Newbridge on wye I believe. The Ithon was a crystal clear sparkling river when I was a child 35 years ago.... Powys is a mess. The wye is still clean in Rhayader where I go to swim. Fingers crossed it stays that way? I wish I could do more... I want to get involved with CPRW as I have an environmental science degree.... So frustrating!
Brilliant programme that George managed to make entertaining despite the shocking subject matter. Loved the live format and range of people feature. Thank goodness for concerned citizens but let's get the authorities the funding they need too
thank you all for caring about our most precious sources of water and waterways
**
I applaud every person in this video who send time and effort to improve the conditions of the Wye. I`ve seen and smelled the foul crap in person, I thought it was duck poo. If we can get rid of the polluters, our river can be a delight to us all and our children again.
Thank you for making this video. Shocking, horrible and just worrying, so worrying. I have started looking for ways to help and I hope all those that have seen this will do the same. I dipped my feet in the Wye when I was a small kid 50 years ago and I last swam in it this summer.
Excellent coverage and demonstration of the role of citizens in governance through holding laws, companies and authorities to account
An amazing piece of live television. Well done to George and everyone else involved in the production.
Well done. I had no idea this was happening. Really like the format of the show. What an exciting way to use UA-cam
Thanks George
Good that your Welsh government representatives...have the courage to be interviewed. Though not surprised by the bravery, I'm pleased to see tradition and culture are strong. As a boy in Waukesha Wisconsin, I fished the Fox River. Old men would tell me stories of The Fox supporting a prized trout fishery. In 1981, however, the river was horribly polluted. Me and my fishing buddy would find culverts empting directly into the water. Smell was sickly sweet. Never did we eat the fish. Before moving to Alaska, I didn't know rivers could be crystal clear, clean enough to drink. Hope all goes well with your end of the world. Take care.
Brilliant journalism. Thank you!
This needs to be aired on BBC one at prime viewing time! The general public should not buy the 'Happy Eggs' and should refuse to pay their water bills until they address problems discussed here ... Absolute scandal !
Lots needs to be aired on the BBC at primetime but it's not going to happen................................... The media take their name ffrom the greek goddess Media the goddess of illusion!!! No help there........................ people 'waking up' at last is the only way we obviously cannot rely on capitalism and govt to do it themselves there is and has always been a huge conflict of interests...................
I love everyone involved, thank you.
Thank you for opening my eyes to this and educating us, I am shocked & dismayed
we declared the rights of the River Cam on midsummer eve as guardians we are determined to stop over-abstraction, pollution and the massive unsustainable development of buildings and infrastructure that will kill our river in a few years if we are not successful. Solidarity with you all.
Can anyone put me right on the condition of Scottish rivers.
@@wolfcamera1 well how much agriculture have you got ?
How can I join, I’d love to help?
Brilliant documentary! Great job
I missed the livestream, as I was away with family, but watching this back it retains its hard-hitting, tell-it-as-it-is, strength. I will be using this with my school classes in September - and telling a former colleague (who is now a Head near the end of the river Wye!) to make use of it too. Brilliant work by the whole team and special thanks to all the citizens who took part who were clearly not used to working on camera. I look forward to seeing the whole video go viral in due course - some school resources linking everyday things (like eggs and chicken meat) to the impacts would be a good addition (and happy to help develop these).
Thank you George and thanks too to all the contributors to this programme. . So sorry to hear of the pollution of so many rivers and streams in England and Wales - yes, it's either human waste or in many areas farm pollution. Such visual beauty in the countryside, to be polluted in reality like this is criminal. I live in New Zealand. "Clean, green" New Zealand. Sorry folks, 80% of our rural, lowland rivers are so polluted you're not advised to swim in them. In NZ the major culprit is, by a long, long way, intensive dairying. And as in the UK, no-one likes dirty rivers. And like UK it's still happening. Our present government is a bit more informed and with the Greens, there are some changes coming, very strongly resented by the superstructure of the industry, though that's a shame as there are good farmers trying to do things better. There are 6.5 million cows in NZ, there used to be 2 million, human population 5 million. 6.5 million cows produce the same amount of sewage as 60 million people. Sheep and beef farm conversion to dairy has produced those extra 4 million cows, one million of them in a place they never should be, the Canterbury Plains, dependent on huge amounts of irrigation to grow the grass and massive amounts of nitrate and phosphate fertilisers. The pollution and the urine seeps through the stony porous subsoils into the aquifers that supply drinking water in rural communities and Christchurch, NZ's second largest city., causing high nitrate levels, many times the level now known to be associated with increasing rates of bowel cancer, though lower than the much higher permitted levels in NZ - and NZ has the highest bowel cancer rate in the world. It's been sufficiently high at times for communities not to be able to use it in making up baby feeds, it causes blue baby syndrome. It's not just the rivers and the fish that suffer with pollution, it eventually returns to affect us humans. The first rule of survival in nature is "don't foul your own nest". Homo sapiens apparently still has to learn this lesson, both here and in regard to global warming, and likely too late to avoid some very unpleasant consequences An excellent resource on this matter here: www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/new-zealand-rivers-pollution-100-per-cent-pure/13236174. A couple of years ago, polluted drinking water with Campylobacter in Hawkes Bay, killed several people and thousands ill, many seriously. The source was a pond above a catchment contaminated with sheep faeces. Previously, the bores that provided drinking water in this area were so pure, that the water didn't need treatment. The same thing has happened with our drinking water in the Wairarapa four years ago, polluted by E Coli, almost certainly from cow faeces but here there was a failure in the UV treatment. Much drinking water around rural NZ is regularly contaminated in a similar manner.
Thanks so much. We have the Environment Agency 'head office' here in Bristol and have watched their slow decimation by successive recent governments. It must change!
They have been cut to within an inch of their life. The destruction of our environment is the destruction of ourselves.
Great film. Thank you for drawing attention to these issues.
I'm sharing this. Well done, a piece of low budget brilliance.
Thanks this is a brilliant explanation of what’s happening. Great examples of public pressure.
Dear God, we have taken our eye off the ball big time. And the position has clearly been eroding over a number of years. This sort of thing doesn't happen overnight.
Its the same in Ireland unfortunately. Rivers and lakes are being destroyed by ever more intensified (dairy & beef) agriculture. We used to have over 500 pristine water (highest quality) bodies in the 1980's, now its less than 20. No-one seems to give a sh*t
Well done George and crew for doing this
And the monster called Irish water has been a catastrophic failure - and that’s just scratching the surface of a more systemic failure
I doubt you would be so keen to export so much of your agricultural surplus if you had to pay the true cost of its production.!
I noticed on a map I saw of intensive farms that there were lots in Ireland. Funny that they pick on Ireland, Powys and Herefordshire. Not the Cotswolds for example.
@@andrewtrip8617 Unfortunately we do know the true costs but while other countries have fossil fuel or car lobby's we have the agricultural lobby. Theyre very powerful here and very well funded and connected. Its an uphill battle with them.
Oh man, in Ireland too, damn. Unregulated capitalism sacrifices humanity and nature on the altar of greed, egos and revenue.
What an eye-opening report. I am in shock. Thank you for airing this subject.
Thank you to George Monbiot and everyone involved in manking this brilliant film showing the grim reality of how the rivers are today! It is a subject I have devoted a chapter to in my forthcoming book from Moon Books entitled Saving Mother Ocean. All this pollution and sewage is on its way to the sea!
I'm not sure I can say that I 'enjoyed' watching this as it's horrifying, but I'm really glad I did. Thank you everyone who worked on this for putting it out there.
An excellent movie with excellent research, this is a documentary you must watch! At a time when pollution levels in our rivers is clearly increasing, I find it impossible to believe that our government has no knowledge of what is happening and it's implications. As if that was not enough, government funding for the Environment Agency has been cut by more than two third's by successive governments since 2010 when it should be increasing, taking inflation into account the true cut will be far more than that. With huge cuts like that how can they ever be totally effective in their role ?
As a river angler i can confirm that the state of our rivers is shocking.
Me too fella, its breaks my heart, my beloved riving gipping in suffolk is the same, the EA couldn't run a piss up in a brewery
Write to your MP/s Councillors, Environment Agency, Rivers Authority, the papers, local and National 👍
Thanks for the great work, you are doing, we need as much help as possible to reclaim our rivers back from generation to come.
Thank you for shining a light on this reckless disregard and ambivalence. It is utterly disgraceful.
I have been an expatriate for twenty years now. Forty years ago the River Elwy (not far away) suddenly changed from a fast-flowing transparent brown (it drains from moorland) stream full of plants and mosses, and populated with salmon, trout, eels, gudgeons, minnows, a whole host of insects, swallows, bats, foxes, water voles, kingfishers, the whole list. The last time I saw it, a couple of years ago, it was a light grey trickle with ragged black flood-damaged edges, which hopefully didn't poison the open ocean when it met it.
That you can let heaven turn to hell and not even notice for forty years is disgusting. Edit: I discover from the comments that it was the change in (abdication of) public responsibility brought on by M. Thatcher _et al._ How unsurprising was that.
The same happened to the river Pont, in Northumberland, which I fished as a child. I remember it as a fast.flowing, clean, clear river, full of brown trout, grayling, minnows, crayfish and eels. I used to regularly see water voles, otters and kingfishers. When I visited it after 20 years, it had been reduced to a slow, stagnant, trickle. The gravelly bottom had been replaced by an orange-brown ochreous sludge. I walked a couple of miles of its' length and didn't see a single fish. It is terrible to see what's happening to Britain's rivers.
This is fantastic ! Found the singing at the end giving me goosebumps and together with the footage of George alone by the beautiful river to be powerfull emotionally...we can do this people !!!!
Brilliant reporting. The government MUST follow the law and act.
In general water management should be brought into public ownership.
Fantastic informative but shockingly revealing video and the end inspiring! Thank you all!
Loved this. Not just for the content but the way the film was made. Found it really entertaining and memorable. Would be great to see more documentaries made like this
Thank you so much for doing this! I really hope to see more!
We should ALL be enraged by how our planet is being destroyed for short term profits. Every country, all over the world. ALL of us.
More and more of us are realizing it.
More of us are feeling it.
More and more of us are doing something about it.
That gives me hope.
“The Poonami.” Best line of the documentary.
Their river protection resources extend to one guy called Kevin with an ipad, a bicycle, and apparently no torch.
Brilliant! Thank-you so much
Thanks for an informative and balanced programme. Very cleverly produced to boot. Depressing, of course, but we must allow our eyes adjust to the darkness in order to tackle the issues that lurk in the shadows.
Really great documentary - well done to everyone involved. I was impressed with the ambition getting boats, cars and drones all involved on a live broadcast!! Great job, really informative. I’ve written to my MP and will look forward to further updates and how we can all do our part, however small…
This is brilliant work, thank you for exposing the filth and horror the authorities accept.
Well done George Monbiot. I salute your determination to shine a light on all our dirty little secrets. I love the live documentary form and how you made it really interesting with all the different forms of contribution from interviews, poems , videos, maps etc.
I can’t see a politician closing down a chicken farm, just have to stop planning permission for new ones. The maxim “polluter pays” should be applied to those farms. The price of chicken in the supermarkets does not reflect the cost to the environment. If you must eat meat, eat less, but of a higher quality.
Just wondering if the chicken shit could be dried and bagged and sold as fertiliser at garden centres. If there’s so much of it, it could surely be profitable, even if it was collected and processed centrally rather than each farmer having his own plant.
Yes, it would be a good start to make the American corporation Cargill, who is profiteering from their intensive poulty 'units' pay for the damage they have done.
I was thinking about the collecting of the chicken droppings Kathy- why not put it to some good use while getting it away from where it does harm? If practical to remove from the chicken farms, then perhaps adding it to those public composting facilities (where they turn garden waste into compost) would make sense as well. That might be more feasible than closing existing farms down, as going about that might be difficult- how do you decide which farm gets the boot? The most recent ones? If we could calculate the amount of phosphate etc. that a chicken farm of any given size can make use of, then the excess can be calculated and required to be collected for processing. That would remove this problem of excess nutrients leaching into the rivers.
When you see a pollution I’d recommend calling the local water utility first. They are duty bound to attend in two hours (24hours a day) to check it out and essentially prove it isn’t them. They’re also equipped to take samples etc. I tracked down quite a number of pollutions than had nothing to do with the water company I worked for. The EA just aren’t sufficiently staffed.
@will lawson We don’t. What do you think the Environment Agency is for? Our shitty government just doesn’t think it’s a priority. It needs to be properly funded to be able to do what’s it’s mandated to.
It’s like Sir Tom raising money to fund the NHS, it’s a damning indictment of our times and absolutely disgraceful.
Thank you dor making this!! Thank you for all your wonderful work. Love from Belgium
What a film. Love the way this was shot and I love the the awareness it’s spreading.
Absolutely shocking! Thank you for raising awareness. The rivers here in Cumbria are full of green sludge. Time to take action 👍
In Orwell's book things were called the opposite of what they actually were. "Happy Eggs" is therefore incredibly Orwellian
Some years ago I saw a film of the conditions within one of their facillities 'not happy' at all.......... Names a load of pr rubbish.
I really love & respect George Monbiot, I don't know how he keeps his sanity! At least he's kept his sense of humour despite the world going to hell in hand basket. Where is the regulation to ensure the rivers are kept clean?
He is "crying in the wilderness": those who have the power to make global changes to prevent climate breakdown like the culpable corporations and rich governments aren't listening. He's right: our world is run by psychopaths.
I'm European and I never heard of this river before. The only famous British river is the Thames. Having said that, this was a great documentary.
This is absolutely horrific. When I was young the rivers were teeming with life. Devastating to see such widespread decay and death of species.
I had no idea this was a massive problem!
Thank you for the in-depth information on why our rivers are so polluted.
I have had the joy of the river authority and found them rather bazaar.
Poison was placed in bate boxes around a pond in our local park, with poisoned dead rats lying around and in the water.
Called the council, they turned up 6 hrs after helpers cleaned up the area and removed the bate boxes and poison, they also rescued a gull on the amber list caught up in fishing wire in the pond with fishermen shouting at the rescuer to get out of the polluted water!
The river authority was alerted and declared they would come down on the council and the council lied and lied and declared there was no poison there in the first place.
Photo evidence was provided, so the river authority came and visited the next day, to look at fishermen’s licenses, the newspaper claimed!
That pond is a disgrace to wildlife, hardly any ducks and loads of people throw bread in the water to the few that are there!
Do not feed ducks BREAD near the water!
Take sweetcorn, seed, peas, plant based food that doesn’t harm the water.
Do experiments with children and see what happens when you put certain foods in the water and see what happens to get an idea of the damage it causes. If you have bread, throw it away from the water.
It is very sad to know and see how much damage humans cause to the environment and wildlife.
We need to do better, so much better and it starts with you and why we should be eating a plant based diet
1. For the animals.
2. For the planet.
3. For your health 🌱
What makes you think rats won't eat sweetcorn. Peas and seeds . Eat the ducks and don't put anything in the pond .
I have just found this, I am horrified. I used to visit the river for many years. My family lived just a short distance from there. I'll forward this, thank you.
Fantastic doing this live. Was exciting to watch and shocking too. Will share asap
Fantastically produced documentary. Well done George and the whole team involved. As several state in the documentary it is a truly heartbreaking state of affairs. Let's hope some of these inspiring individuals and this film can start to bring about some change. It's also just further evidence of the destructive practices intertwined with animal agriculture. The planet desolately needs our diets and food production systems to radically alter.
Brilliant exploration into this devestating truth ....my beautiful homeland :( But I feel inspired by the people in Ilkley, Yorkshire and other river success stories around the world
Inexcusable pollution. Anyone walking along streams and rivers during lockdown will have noted the criminal damage being done.
Zephaniah is a king amongst men. As are you Mr Monbiot. Keep fighting the good fight.
Top work from all concerned! The worst reaction would be not to care or try - thanks for the prompt to do what we can and get ACTIVE! And respect to the Welsh government for actually being accountable and appearing on your live stream. Keep up the good work trying to persuade people not to take this shit lying down!
A very good programme. Thanks.
Well done George, Franny and all involved. Its about time that we took back control via our consumption habits and force the govt to take action and take water and sewage out of private hands
Well done George and everyone involved X
This was a great programme and have learnt a lot from the wide range of speakers. Thank you!
Thank you George and Spanner Films for this video!
so singing about it at the end makes all the difference well done.
Well done to all involved. The continuous stocking of fish in rivers shows that the natural populations have crashed on my local rivers which are full of algae in the summers. This plus abstraction are having devastating effects.
What is abstraction, please? It's certainly perverse that we have to stock rivers with fish, since they should be there naturally.
Excellent show. Opened my eyes a lot.
“I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made.”― A.E. Housman, Last Poems
Beautiful quote fellow nocturnal 🥺♥️
Well done for exposing this, to you George and your team. I'm passionate about my fishing especially the rivers and i have shared this to all my followers here and on facebook.
I'd also add, if there are a million chickens in this catchment, according to wiki, the average chicken produces about 4.5 kg poo per month, of which 0.5% is phosphate and similar amount nitrate and potassium. Both the former two substances are associated with pollution and eutrophication. If you do the maths, this is equivalent to around 324 tonnes of phosphate and a similar amount of nitrate deposited in the Wye catchment every year. That's equivalent in a different measure of nearly 50,000 x 20 kg bags of NPK fertiliser. Now it is almost certain that farmers are applying their own bought fertilisers to their lands in this catchment at times and as was observed in the documentary, when the amount is additional the plant or grasses growing needs it will run off or accumulate in the soils and eventually reach the drains, i.e. the river. The programme didn't discuss beef, sheep or dairying in the catchment at all, but I imagine there's a good deal which must also be contributing. Whatever the case here, it's a massive amount of pollution just from the chicken sh*t in anyone's reckoning.
We need to see action on our rivers- Rivercide highlighted the dire issues on our waterways
Good ole George 💜🌻
You don't see this on countryfile!!
Well done for noting that! That’s because countryfile is biased towards animal agriculture, which is the main cause of environmental destruction. The BBC should drop the programs advocating animal agriculture, well all tv stations should tbh! When 70bil animals are slaughtered a year, you know you have a massive problem. I don’t advocate cruelty towards animals and therefore save any environmental damage caused by what I eat and products I use and also, my poo is healthier and no animal fat is going down my drains causing fat burgs and contamination! Eat plants 🌱
@@Babycakes_2001 vegetable fat is a thing. It's still in your shit and still causes fat deposits to enter sewers.
Fertilisers used on fields enter waterways. Pesticides used on fields still enter waterways.
Deforestation for growing palm oil is huge business and doesnt involve rearing animals, but kills thousands in the process. Just because it came from a plant does not mean you should be guilt free.
You'll also find palm oil in pretty much every off the shelf product in your local shop.
Wake up and stop thinking you're perfect because you eat a plant based diet, you're just a bit less shitty than anyone who eats meat.
@@TigerLeadFont5 Eliminating the land, fuel use and waste of animal agriculture, and producing less waste yourself, are huge benefits of changing diet. You don't need to use vegetable oils either.
Good point!
@@TigerLeadFont5 Palm oil. That is the ignorants argument as palm oil is in more carnists foods than vegan. Vegans are also ethical and want ethical products. It is well proven that animal agriculture is the main cause for forest destruction and crops grown. 70bil animals a year are slaughtered. They have to live eat and roam somewhere. Think about it.
My guilt is lesser than ever before by going vegan.
Perhaps one should look at their own guilt and try to be a better person by eliminating cruelty from their life 👍
so incredibly sad! thank you for sharing this!
Visited the Wye this week. Ghastly green, full of algae, and very little wildlife.
Thanks for posting!
Proud to be involved in this, excellent job, well done, everyone. Also love what you did to my map in the intro :)
Really scary what's happening to our rivers. It was one of the great advances during my lifetime - the cleaning up and restocking of rivers. I noticed today that the River Mersey in Stockport smelt horrible, like sewage, it hasn't smelt like that since the 1970s.
Well done all involved for an excellent film!
...and why I paid a plumber to remove my flush toilet and have installed an indoor compost toilet...small actions by us all add up!
Excellent effort from all involved
Thank you. Had know idea the Wye was dying. Please reclaim our wild rivers.
Benjamin’s poem 😮😢 superb, but yes very depressing
It would be useful to develop cheap, open-source testing equipment so that citizens can examine their local rivers. I'm thinking you could have a phone app using a microscope lens, would be interesting to see if using machine learning it would be possible to perform ecoli counts.
Some River Trusts have done this in the past. Citizen science has a massive role to play.
@@Tardigrades1 with a microscope app?
Everyone should take water samples from their local rivers as soon as they see something is wrong. Few hours later, will be too late. Document yourself taking the sample. Most of those can be traced to the specific polluter along the river.
This should be pinned to the top.
I thought the same as you too.
Excellent work.
Well done on the live broadcast. I particularly appreciate your including actions that people can take and especially the clear plan listed at the end. My particular angle would be that farming livestock is not a bad thing, it is the industrial methods. This applies to any farming, whether it includes animals or not. A relatively small number of animals in the farming system is probably the most regenerative and productive approach as we need a certain amount of ruminant dung for fertility (but not so much that it causes the appalling pollution highlighted in this broadcast).
The main cause of sewage treatment works like Mogden discharging untreated sewage into the Thames etc is the fact that over the mass of London, including all the 1930s housing, there is no separate Surface Water sewer system, which could channel and discharge relatively unpolluted water from roof gutters and road drains into the rivers. Instead, its discharges into the foul sewer system into which all the human sewage and restuarant and factory liquid waste goes and makes its way to the sewage works, like Modgen.
The foul sewers weren't designed and still don't have the capacity to handle both the foul water and surface water together when the drains "Surcharge" with excess surface water during periods of prolonged heavy rain or flash downpours. Hence you see foul sewer covers "Fountaining" on columns composed of foul and surface water all the way along the route of the main sewers to the sewage works and places like Modgen, which can't cope with the extra input discharging it, untreated into the Thames. And if you live at the bottom of a hill . . . . best of luck.
With global warming its only going to get worse.
The big London super sewer is supposed to remedy this . . . . not without multiple new sewage works and a separate surface water drainage system.
This has been going on years in London.
Funny that we can get all that HS2 tunnelling "Rammed" through the planning and financing system using every trick in the book and yet decent adequate drainage and sewage treatment, a basic Public Health requirement for civilised life, eludes the "Initiative mongers"
We have decent drainage. We have over efficient drainage that completely overwhelms the system when we have a period of extended rainfall. We have major flooding all over the country regularly. If the rivers are flooding then they will not take anymore water from drains, it will all just back up into residential areas. It would take billions of £s worth of civil engineering works to try and remedy this, and it’s just not cost effective. Over efficient drainage of the land starts the whole thing off every year.
London sewage wasn’t designed for over 9 million people
@@gazlives it’s not sewage that’s flooded London it’s rainwater.
Brilliant video. I'm just drafting a email to George Eustice MP. I've worked in a country park for over 41 years. Seen lots of changes in that time to the woodlands, river flooding.
Thank heavens for George ! 🙏
Thank you to everyone involved in making this heartbreaking documentary. I'm off to see if there is a 'Friends of Afon Teifi' organisation...
Mike Wilson, glad that you are doing something in the River Teifi area, back in the 1970 and early 1980,s we lived close to the Teifi in Cilgerran, even then as I worked for Welsh Water, there were problems but only usually after heavy and continuous rain, but it seems with this penny pinching Tory government the funding has been dropped, and the results are plain to see, hope the Teifi is going well 🙏
Excellent programme and long overdue. I suggest that Rivercide needs to learn from the experience of Client Earth who use lawyers to persuade governments to implement their own laws. Citizens action groups are also an excellent idea. .”Adopt a river “ as an objective.Good luck.
So many producers of meat have adverts that show a completely different view of meat production than what actually happens. Earthling Ed has a huge number of videos showing this.
@Myth Tree milk is natural? Please clarify.
Well said Benjamin
a must watch.
The river bed looks like a bath in a student flat.