Life of a Chalkstream: When you need a shovel buy a shovel

Greetings!

I looked at my bill for Sky TV the other day - £108 for the month. Now, I have to admit it is a package loaded up with a few extras for sports and movies, but I suspect it is pretty well the norm for me and the other seven million or so Sky subscribers in the UK. And then I read the interim judgment from Ofwat on water bills for the next 5 years ……..

Many, many years ago when I actually had a proper job, I recall sitting in a management meeting at a greyhound track where the Head of Maintenance got into a blazing row with the Chief Accountant about the purchase of some machinery to maintain the racing surface. It was one of those we cannot afford it/we cannot afford not to do it slagging matches. Hey, I am sure many of us have had a similar mental struggle when trying to decide whether to buy a new fly rod, but I digress.

Eventually the MD (this was in the days before MDs were rebranded CEOs), clearly supremely bored by the whole debate and with his mind made up, looked up from his papers, “If you want people to dig holes you have to buy them shovels,” he said, “just buy the f*****g machine.” The Ofwat judgement, that pretty well cut in half the bids by the water companies for bill increases, put me in mind of that meeting.

Here we have an industry that is crying out for remedial infrastructure spending and willing, given the financial headroom, to spend the money. Now we can all bleat and scream about what has gone before, but ultimately if we want clean rivers and rivers that are not sucked dry by abstraction, we have to look to the future not the past. However, the proposed investment by the water companies over the next five years of £104 billion was chopped back to £88 billion by Ofwat.

It is easy to get lost in with these sorts of colossal numbers. Hey, what is £16 billion between friends? Well, in the context of reservoirs currently we have under construction Havant Thicket on the Hampshire/Sussex border at a cost of £325 million to supply 316,000 homes (720,000 people) which will relieve the pressure on chalkstreams such as the Arun and Meon. If you do the maths that £16 billion would pay for another fifty reservoirs, enough to supply two thirds of all the 25 million households in England and Wales.

So why did Ofwat bottle such an easy win? Politics, of course. Keir Starmer described the bills as ‘punishing’ and Rachel Reeves the increases, though reduced, as a ‘bitter pill’. But again, let us put the increases in context. The average bill in five years’ time, post increase, will be £535 per household per year. Or put another way five months of Sky TV. Or put yet another way 64p (yes, sixty-four pence) per person per day. Average household bills will rise a piddling £19 a year over the next five years, half of which will be eroded by inflation.

Politicians blithely talk of a penny on income tax to save the NHS or have been perfectly willing to load up domestic power bills with green taxes that now account for about 17 per cent, or £142, of a typical household's annual electricity bill. But is anyone prepared to go on the record to do the same for the water industry? It seems not despite the manifest simplicity of the solutions required. My old boss was right – sometimes you just have to spend the money.

PS Since I wrote this Ofwat have announced a continuance of its probe begun in 2021 into how water companies manage their sewage treatment works and networks. It sounds to me like a typical bit of quango arse-covering which will no doubt conclude the water companies are underinvesting!

Water, water every where

I feel increasingly like Victor Meldrew (I dooooooooon’t believe it) or the Ancient Mariner (Water, water every where) as this season progresses. Just when I think we are returning to something more normal another thing pops up to make me ask how? Why? Can this be possibly happening? Take the River Anton.

As the season was due to open the river, having spent a goodly portion of the winter out of the river, was gradually coming back into itself. It looked good enough to eat, with weed aplenty and bright gravel that shone back at you like undipped headlights. But as the opening day came, and April turned into May, the process reversed and by Mayfly time even a simple walk along the banks required waders with Upper Clatford under deeper water in early summer than it ever had been at the height on the ‘once in a century’ winter floods of 2014. A gentle bank fishing beat was repurposed as all wading.

Upper Clatford (River Anton) bank and river

We hoped the June weed cut would bring some respite; the sheer act of the cut removes a volume of weed that lowers the water level in the same way as stepping out of a bath does. It worked out just that way and with a month that saw rainfall at half the average the beat, though muddy, was more like its usual self. However, with a full month of rain falling in the first nine days of July I had my Meldrew/Mariner moment as the river and meadows once again become one.

I am no hydrologist, but I think the simple truth is that the chalkstreams, especially on the upper reaches, are simply sitting in a sodden floodplain with the rivers at capacity. Usually, at this time of year, the rivers would be dropping in both height and velocity, able to draw in water from the surrounding land. But not just now. Any extra moisture, be it rain or springs, is literally and metaphorically, a quart trying to squeeze itself into a pint pot. Something has to give, that give being the banks and surrounding lands.

As I have written before, too much water is a good problem to have but sometimes you do have to wonder …….. keep those wellingtons handy.

Video of the week

The video this week features a Ukrainian angler who throws a fish, with remarkable accuracy, from a boat to hit a Russian drone.

I can sympathise. There are times here at Nether Wallop, which bounds the Army helicopter flying school at Middle Wallop when I would gladly do something similar though, judging by the armoury slung beneath the Apache helicopters, I fear I might come off worse in the event of retaliation.

Watch it here …..

Special Offers

You had to be quick off the draw last week as the special offers sold out in short order. I have learnt from you all in the past that not everyone likes a two-for-one. Plenty of you like a bargain when fishing alone, so I think Avon Springs scratched that particular itch. Not sure at this moment what we will be doing for August, but don’t forget to register for the Special Offers email which gives you a 24 hour head start.

In the meantime, Abbots Worthy on the River Itchen is now available for exclusive use for a single Rod for the remainder of the season and the Kimbridge Ginger Beer beat on the River Test has trout days for three or more Rods or more in September or two in October with grayling tickets for single Rods or more from mid-October.

Kimbridge Ginger Beer beat

Quiz

The normal random collection of questions inspired by the date, events or topics in the Newsletter. It is just for fun with answers at the bottom of the page.

1) Which two wheeled race had its first ever winner on this day in 1903?

2) Victor Meldrew, played by Richard Wilson (pictured), was the central character in which BBC sitcom?

3) What bird did the Ancient Mariner shoot and with what?