English Rivers Are in Crisis But Not For The Reasons People Think

English Rivers Are in Crisis But Not For The Reasons People Think— Billions in Investment May Not Achieve the Gains Expected

Mark Coates, Vice President, Infrastructure Policy Advancement, Bentley

David Elliott, Director of Ferns Natural Capital Strategy and former Group Chief Innovation Officer at Wessex Water

Headlines about English rivers being in crisis are a frequent occurrence in national media these days.

Analysing data from the State of our Rivers report helps to understand why this is the case.

The data, collected by the Rivers Trust, shows that none of England's rivers are achieving "high" overall status, the highest ranking available. And none are achieving "good" overall status either, the second highest ranking available.

The report also measures English rivers for ecological health to evaluate what is living in the river, and the presence, absence and abundance of species.

Researchers found more than four-fifths (85%) of rivers fail to reach good ecological standards; and only 15% achieve good ecological health status.

The report makes for worrying reading.

However, it’s important to remember that English rivers have not always been in this state.

Water quality in English rivers saw significant gains following privatisation of the water companies 35 years ago.

A number of rivers which had been declared "biologically dead," including the Thames, Mersey, Stour, and Wandle, were transformed after privatisation.

However, progress has stagnated over the past decade.

And according to the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP), the situation appears to be deteriorating.

The OEP, an independent watchdog which holds the UK Government to account on environmental performance stated in their May 2024 report: “Most of England’s water bodies are in an unsatisfactory state. […} Overall progress has been limited with some recent stagnation and decline in the state of water bodies. In some cases, the condition of water bodies has remained visibly poor and a cause of considerable public and ecological concern.”

However, while the state of England’s rivers has now become a matter of significant public and media interest the causes of poor river health are not generally well understood.

The conventional narrative most regularly played out in the media places blame squarely on water companies and sewage discharges.

However, the reality is far more complex.

Storm overflows, while undoubtedly polluting and therefore a potential risk to public and river health, are not alone.

The most challenging pressure on river health is land use – both rural and urban.

However, alongside land use sits a complex web of other factors that are often overlooked in public discourse (we will identify some of the lesser considered factors later).

The causes of poor river health are plural not singular.

Urban land use is one of the major challenges.

As cities expand and more and more surfaces are paved over. Rainwater which would naturally soak into the ground instead flows across paved areas picking up pollutants and then either directly into the river, untreated, through surface water outfalls, or into the sewers and is then too often expelled into rivers and other water courses. These toxic contaminants picked up from roads and other surfaces, is a significant source of harm.

England has a combined sewage system made up of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of sewers, some of which was built by the Victorians.

The UK government published its storm overflows discharge reduction plan in August 2022.

Responding to this reduction plan would require water companies to spend £56 billion between 2025 and 2050 to cut spills from Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) that discharge into inland waterways and designated bathing waters.

To tackle CSOs in London alone, Thames Water’s Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan (DWMP) has identified a need to remove more than 7,000 hectares of impermeable surfaces from the greater London area and replace them with Sustainable Drainage Solutions (SuDS). This is an area equivalent to 50 times the size of Hyde Park and almost 5% of London’s total surface area.

To achieve this is no small undertaking. The reality is we have a rainwater management issue that stems from treating rainwater as waste (even though it is also a precious resource) when it lands on our properties or public realm.

Rural land use is one of the other major challenges.

Last year a new report published by the think tank Onward found that farmers are responsible for ­polluting more rivers than water ­companies.

Analysis of Environment Agency data by the Onward found pollution from agriculture affects 40% of Britain’s rivers and lakes compared with 36% that are damaged through pollution from untreated wastewater run-offs.

The agency estimates that about half of all nitrates and 25% of phosphorus found in rivers derives from agriculture.

The water sector is investing heavily in these two main areas: reducing nutrients and tackling sewage overflow.

Water companies plan to spend more than £62bn tackling these two issues, which includes £56bn to cut spills from Combined Sewer Overflows and £6 billion to reduce nutrient pollution.

Through their drainage and wastewater management plans (DWMPs) the previous Conservative administration required water companies to upgrade 160 of their wastewater treatment works to meet the strictest phosphorus limits by 2028.

The government expects a further 400 will need to be upgraded by 2038, to reduce harmful nutrient pollution from treated wastewater.

Even if water companies achieve better than technically feasible limits in reducing phosphates and nitrogen, rivers still won't reach good ecological status without addressing agricultural contributions.

The current approach to river health is hampered by having only three main "investable streams": nutrient reduction, storm overflow reduction, and flood alleviation.

This narrow, siloed focus fails to address the full spectrum of pressures on river systems. Other significant factors include:

• Microplastics
• Pharmaceutical pollution from human consumption
• "Forever chemicals", man-made Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
• Habitat barriers preventing fish migration
• Loss of natural floodplains
• Groundwater and surface water abstraction
• Urban development

Because these multiple causes of poor river health are not well understood, particularly how they act in combination then the problem of poor river health is at risk of being misdiagnosed.

And if our efforts to restore our rivers to health are misaligned with the causes, we are in danger of the wrong course of treatment being prescribed.

This situation reminds me of a football coach or director of football being pressured by the club’s fans to spend lots of money on one or two solutions such as buying a new defence or forward line. While buying these players might solve one problem it will not solve the wider holistic problems a club faces with culture, player commitment and engagement, management styles and playing styles.

And the investment in players will therefore not deliver the results people want.

Nature-based and community-based solutions can offer a more holistic approach to river restoration.

These might include constructed wetlands that can handle both agricultural and sewage treatment outputs while improving biodiversity and isolating carbon.

However, despite broad agreement on their potential, such solutions rarely seem to progress beyond pilot schemes.

Of the billions of pounds of planned investment, only about £3 billion is allocated to nature-based solutions.

This limited adoption of nature-based solutions highlights the challenges three key stakeholders: regulators, buyers (typically water companies), and sellers (supply chain), face when managing risk.

Understandably, stakeholders can be risk averse. However, this creates friction that prevents scaling up innovative nature-based solutions as stakeholders want to rely on proven solutions.

The regulatory system itself also poses challenges as it is historically geared towards financing visible infrastructure that can be valued as assets and paid for through water bills over time.

Nature-based solutions, which often involve behavioural changes and diffuse benefits, can be more challenging to regulate, validate.

The system also lacks proper incentives for holistic solutions.

While water companies have statutory obligations to reduce nutrients, other stakeholders do not face the same obligations, so there is much less of a lever that regulators can pull to compel other stakeholders to comply.

This creates a bias toward single-issue solutions rather than comprehensive river improvement programs.

A more effective approach would involve:

1. Creating investable river improvement programs which focus on holistic solutions rather than separate investment streams which tackle individual issues.
2. Creating catchment partnerships to increase collaboration and to deliver more local engagement and accountability.
3. Implementing policy mandates for water harvesting in new developments.
4. Using market mechanisms to enable collaboration between farmers, water companies, and other stakeholders.

Success stories for creating these market mechanisms exist.

As the former director of strategy and new markets at Wessex Water, in 2016 David led the development of a nutrient trading scheme in the Poole Harbour catchment in Dorset through a platform called EnTrade, which made it easier for farmers and land managers to collaborate with water companies to reduce nutrient loss and earn money from environmental, nature-based projects on their land.

This method meant EnTrade were able to pay farmers to change land use practices, at the time amounting to £2-4 per kilogram of nitrogen reduction achieved through land management changes

And cost the water company that same £2-4 per kilogram compared to the much more expensive £20-2,000 per kilogram cost (plus significant carbon impact of reducing nitrogen through traditional water treatment methods and the need to upgrade water treatment facilities. It doesn’t mean that water companies don’t invest in assets, it just helps to decide where the next best place to take action lies.  There have since been many other similar pilots.

However, scaling such initiatives requires overcoming institutional inertia and risk aversion.

While pressure from activists and the media has raised awareness of river health issues, the resulting focus on rapid solutions – like building storage tanks to reduce overflow incidents – may divert resources from more effective long-term strategies.

Achieving healthy rivers requires a fundamental shift in how we manage water systems, highlighting the need for more and closer collaboration between water companies, farmers, local authorities, developers and communities all of whom need to contribute, supported by Government policies which deals with some of the challenging decisions such as how and when we use pharmaceuticals, and how we manage their impact on the environment.

If the sector doesn’t invest in holistic systemic change, many billions in investment may fail to deliver the river quality improvements the public expects.