A NEW deal on addressing pollution in the river Wye will for the first time bring governments on both sides of the English-Welsh border together along with farmers and environmentalists, a Government minister has said.
UK Minister for water Emma Hardy MP said that what stakeholders wanted funding for was research, “as they might understand where the pollution is coming from, but don’t yet have the answers on how to deal with it”.
“I’m really pleased that we’ve been able to grant that request today,” she said, with the announcement of a £1-million fund to look into the impact of changing farming and land management practices and of new approaches to improve river water quality.
She added that by contrast, the action plan for the river announced under the previous government “didn’t involve Wales”, while it had “tried to enforce a river champion”.
Working with the Wye Catchment Partnership of over 60 environmental, farming and official bodies, “the government is saying, ‘you tell us what you think the solutions are’, and then supporting those”, Ms Hardy said.
One of the local participants, Wye & Usk Foundation chief executive Simon Evans, said afterwards it marked “a huge step forward” in addressing the long-term problems blighting the river.
“After 20 years, it was great to see UK and Welsh ministers singing from the same hymn sheet on the Wye,” he said.
“We want a vision for the river that’s owned by everyone – farmers, officials, river users – that’s based on data and that’s adaptable to each river in the catchment,” he explained.
“We can then agree on potential solutions, with evidential certainty, that work for everyone.”
The arrangement “will allow far more to be achieved” than the previously announced action plan for the river, “none of which was new money”, and which only covered the less-than-half of the river’s length in Herefordshire, Mr Evans said.
But as yet, “we don’t have a huge amount of certainty on how this new plan will be delivered,” he added.
Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire Jesse Norman said it was “good news that the UK and Welsh governments are finally getting together to work on cleaning up the river Wye, as I have campaigned for since 2020”.
But he warned: “The £1 million they have announced won’t go far.”
