Water quality in many of our rivers and estuaries in the UK isn’t good enough, and that includes the River Dee and the Dee Estuary. We want our rivers to be the envy of Europe and the world. The health of our waterways shouldn’t be in the same league as France, which bans swimming in the Seine, and Ireland, where nearly half its rivers are overloaded with nitrogen.
Blame – more than you think
We must, of course, hold our entire water industry - not just individual companies - to account and demand they do better. But we need to go further than this and admit the water pollution issue is the fault of other parts of society too, not just the water industry. Agriculture and other industries are responsible for adding pollutants to our rivers, so we need to tackle these problems too. It's too easy and lazy to just blame a water company.
Starting local
We need less concrete and more grass in our new developments and our existing ones, so rainwater can soak away naturally rather than overloading our combined sewerage system. There has been talk of creating new Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) in Chester, which I support, but let's go further: we need to look at retrofitting these across the region into existing developments, into the very centre of Chester and Neston. Every public car park in this area should be made of permeable paving for starters.
Thinking bigger
But when it comes to the River Dee and the Dee Estuary we need to think big, we need to think beyond the boundaries of this constituency. We need to think and act on a catchment level - a catchment is the area of land that feeds a river or estuary. The catchment of The Dee is over 2,000 square kilometres so if we want the water quality to improve we need to work with many organisations and experts across this entire area. Not just a couple of water companies and handful of developers in Chester.
We need nature’s help
And what we must do in this catchment, our catchment, is embrace the use of Nature-based Solutions (NbS): help nature to help us.
Nature can help our water quality with wetlands. These marshes and mires are the kidneys of the landscape. Wetlands have been called “nature's superheroes”, not least by my good friend, Professor of Wetland Science, Christian Dunn, because they can naturally clean and filter-out waterborne pollutants. Unfortunately though, the UK has lost 75% of its wetlands since 1700 - and we need to do something about that. Hopefully the Conservative’s environmental plans like the new Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) scheme will help with this in England, but we need to push for more and better managed wetland habitats across The Dee's catchment.
Greater advantages
These nature-based solutions will not only remove pollutants, whether they come from a sewage spill, an industrial accident or incorrect farming practise, but they will improve biodiversity, store carbon and will even improve the well-being of local communities.
To create them though, we need to work with partners right across the region.
Let’s take action
The water quality of the River Dee and the Dee Estuary should be better.
· We must hold the water industry to account, and we must go further: demanding other sectors of society are addressed too.
· SuDS and local-based activities in the constituency are important, but let’s get serious and look at this problem on a catchment scale.
· We need to embrace nature-based solutions – wetlands – across our entire landscape. The advantages for doing so go beyond improving the quality of our waterways.
Chester North and Neston should be leading the way in this wide-reaching approach to improving our rivers and estuaries. By voting for me on Thursday, July 4, you’ll be ensuring we will be.
