Life of a Chalkstream: The horrible stink of s**t and institutional indifference

Life on a Chalkstream

13th September 2024

Having problems reading this email? View as Webpage

· The horrible stink of s**t and institutional indifference The other water company scandal

· Mortimer & Whitehouse at Ilsington

· Half Term Kids Camps

· That was the month that was August

· Quiz

Greetings!

In response to my piece last time Jeremy Clarkson should ban pesticides not Keir Starmer I was asked by a reader why I keep slagging off farmers. Firstly, I am sorry to any farmers if my writing comes across that way: it is never my intention to slag anyone off (OK maybe the EA and Ofwat …..) but if there is a truth to be told it should be told, however hard that might be and believe me, that is hard for me.

For many years I defended farming, farmers and the industry of agriculture seeing the criticism of a very British way of life emanating from green zealots who had agendas beyond preserving the countryside. You see, I come from a farming background; my paternal grandfather made his living raising cattle and my father was an alumni of Sparsholt Agricultural College. Farming was never a career to which I aspired but I was bought up on a small farm, my childhood friends were largely children of farmers and my memories from back then most definitely err to the bucolic rather than the metropolitan. Wellingtons were then, as they are now, my preferred choice of footwear.

I am not sure for anyone alive today there has ever been a golden age of farming that was kind to the countryside - that probably died, as did the millions who tilled the land, with the First World War. The mechanisation and industrialisation of crop and animal production has been relentless in the past hundred years as the population has surged with people increasingly separated from the land both emotionally and physically. In many cases that is true of farmers themselves who have been encouraged, cajoled and incentivised down the agri-business route where pesticides, fertilizers and animal husbandry methods are deployed in ways unimaginable a generation or two ago.

Now, that is not all bad from the perspective of the consumer with supermarkets that offer an unsurpassed choice of reliable, cheap and, if you choose the correct items, nutritious food. But all that comes at a cost and that cost is to the fabric of the countryside. If you spray millions of gallons of pesticides it will kill trillions of insects. If you layer the land with fertilizer the nitrogen rich runoff has only one ultimate destination. Industrial scale chicken rearing factories grouped along the banks of a single river – well, you know how that one goes. And that is before we have even started to talk about salmon cages …….. which brings me to a horrible stink that currently pervades the British countryside that combines both the worst of the water industry, the agriculture industry and regulatory oversight. I am talking about sewage sludge.

Believe me, there are times in The Wallops when the entire area stinks of s**t. I am not talking about a mild, passing smell but the rankest, fetid odour that lingers for days. Somewhere close by a well-organised convoy of lorries will have bought in part dried, black sludge the by-product of sewage plants that will be piled in a field ready for spreading. By the way I am not talking about a couple of lorry loads; imagine something the width and height of a bungalow but often hundreds of yards long. To be fair, when it arrives, it doesn’t smell that much but once spread and rained upon the odour is unbelievable.

I think most of us accept this as part of country life having been reassured over the years that the sludge, despite the olfactory assault suggesting otherwise, is benign and a useful way of distributing an unwanted part of human life to benefit the soil and farmer income, calculated at £60 million from this source last year. However, I have always had a bit of a mental question mark – is the sludge really harmless? It turns out, thanks to an investigation by the New York Times into the same practice across American farms that ‘there is a growing awareness that sludge fertilizer can contain heavy concentrations of “forever chemicals” linked to cancer, birth defects and other health risks.’

As a result the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who have not tested for ‘forever chemicals’ in the sludge in the past are now doing so “to better understand the scope of farms that may have applied contaminated biosolids [posh name for the sludge] and develop targeted interventions to support farmers and protect the food supply”. The state of Maine has gone one step further entirely banning the use of sewage sludge on agricultural fields.

Now, you might be tempted to think that the US problem is huge compared to ours and that was my assumption until I dug a bit – however bad it is there, it is worse here. The ever helpful Water UK web site, the lobby group for the industry proudly tells us that annually 3.6 million tonnes of biosolids aka sludge are ‘recycled’ to agricultural land each year. That compares with just 2 million tonnes in the US which has 20 times more farmland. You do not need to have Einstein level maths to see that on our tiny, densely populated island how deleterious this intensive application of the sludge must be for our rivers.

You might well ask at this point who regulates the sludge industry and you will discover it is the innocuous sounding Biosolids Assurance Scheme who issue Certificates of Conformity to the water companies. But ultimately the puppet master in all this is our old friend the Environment Agency who have been aware of the forever chemical issue since 2017 as a result of a report they themselves commissioned, did nothing about it and then came under fire earlier this year when taken to court for failing to test sewage sludge for microplastics. Does all this sound horribly familiar? A regulator who does not regulate. Institutionalised pollution that has the official stamp of approval - think over pumping. The destruction of our countryside is happening in plain sight.

In Texas ranchers are suing the EPA for failing to regulate the forever chemicals in sewage sludge which was applied to neighbouring fields contaminating their land and contributing to the deaths of horses, cattle and catfish on their property. I do not wish any such a calamity on anyone but it will probably take a similar existential event to eventually spur government to ban sewage sludge and force the water companies to solve their s**t problem at their expense rather than the expense of the countryside.

Mortimer & Whitehouse at Ilsington

Back in June that juggernaut of a fishing series Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing rolled into Dorset and onto the River Frome at Ilsington in search of monster grayling.

It will be the final episode of the new series which begins on Sunday 22nd September at 9pm on BBC2 with the grayling hunt aired Sunday 10th November.

John Bailey (series fishing consultant), Paul & Bob

Half Term Kids Camps

You can tell I no longer have school age children having mistakenly allocated dates for the autumn term Half Terms Kids Camp the week before half term.

The One Day Camp is both a fun introduction and a refresher to fly fishing here at Nether Wallop Mill. Coming as it does, in the last few days of the season the lake will be stacked with fish with a chance for a brown, rainbow, spartic, blue and tiger slam. It has been done!

The dates we have are Monday October 21/28 for 8-11 years and Tuesday October 22/29 for 12-15 years. Discounts for siblings and combined bookings. More details here .....

That was the month that was August

I think the only thing missing from the August weather was a plague of locusts – searing heat, biblical rain and ripping winds all, at various times, put paid to the very best laid fishing plans.

However, despite all the above two things stand out from the month. Firstly, banks we were still slopping along in July dried to become passable with the proverbial carpet slippers. Secondly, the rivers still remain in prime condition with levels, clean gravel and weed more associated with June. The fish have not always got the message as to how privileged they are to be living through such extraordinary times varying from tight lipped and inert one week, to grab any fly gluttons the following week.

September looks set fair as a great month: in my foray out on Sunday I abandoned subtle, micro patterns in favour of a giant Goddard sedge and a Daddy Long Legs that would frighten the life out of an arachnophobe which the fish went for with slashing takes more reminiscent of Mayfly time. I am pleased to say that Roger Holdsworth will be able to try the same flies if he has a mind as the winner of the August feedback draw having fished at Qing Ya Xi.

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) Who began building his wall on this day in AD 122?

2) Who was Paul Whitehouse’s writing partner in the comedy sketch show The Fast Show?

3) If you had anosmia what condition would you be suffering from?