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BBC Video-River Colne Abstraction, Sewage Pollution etc

Ray Walton

Ray Walton

Senior Member
Watch the Video - River Colne - The Drought in this area is caused by the 'Affinity Water' company over abstracting from the boreholes and rivers and sucking them dry for fat cat profits...with no respect or conscience to the devastating consequences to the wildlife, birds, fish and the riverine environment and all lifeforms. The directors of the company and the Environment Agency officials who license the company should be prosecuted and jailed for allowing this to happen.
...It's the concerned locals that raised the issue. They know the score to what's going on here. Some though are ducking their heads like the river trusts, EA etc. who have done nothing to stop it happening because of their vested interests. It needs to be exposed further. The legal and illegal Thames Water 'Raw Sewage' discharges which are also killing the river, fish, birds and every year, plus the Environment Agency’s tree and habitat destruction recently, all seem to be part of a conspiracy to destroy the River Colne and its feeder rivers and streams. Share this wherever you can and expose it.
https://www.facebook.com/BBCLondon/videos/1543689212339437/?pnref=story
 
Am totally lost for words. How have they been allowed to do this. No only is it a devastation for the wildlife it also damages the environment. They should be ashamed of themselves and be heavily fined. Also, they must be made to put this right ASAP. Am not just say this as an angler but a person that likes and respects all wildlife that we have in our country.
 
That can only be described as a complete failure on the part of the EA to uphold it's environmental responsibilities.
There's plenty online dating back to NRA days stating the importance of restricting abstraction consents to the ground water which is the lifeblood of the Colne.
:(
 
Confusing as the Fishing Prohibited sign on the footbridge in the video looks like it has Chesham Town Council written at the top. Chesham is in Bucks not Herts, so that maybe ​the River Chess but that does still flow into the River Colne.
 
Confusing as the Fishing Prohibited sign on the footbridge in the video looks like it has Chesham Town Council written at the top. Chesham is in Bucks not Herts, so that maybe ​the River Chess but that does still flow into the River Colne, so would be a feeder stream
 
The two photos on my thread Desperate states in west london show both the Colne and the Chess ,and yes the No fishing sign is on the Chess.Both rivers have dried up in their upper reaches. Now the lower reaches rely on output from sewage farms,storm drain feeds numbering in their hundreds( most dry at the moment and sometimes badly connected directly to waste water supply)and silty water from the canal to feed it.Its a total disaster.We were told last Thursday that when HS2 starts in 2 Years time in this area they will be removing 50% more water from the boreholes(if they have not been pumped completly dry by then).The Chess is a feeder stream for the colne. Thames water have finally admitted recently that their sewage farm on the lower chess has been allowing solids to bypass/escape the system(for years)--but it took locals to collect thousands of sanitry towels etc sometimes weekly to push the point with them
 
I think i read somewhere that Affinity Water suck the boreholes dry to sell and supply the water to private companies in the area...and it is 'not' used to supply drinking water for the local people. They are not telling you that. Not sure which companies, but i learnt from OFWAT some years ago that the 'private' business customer has priority over the domestic customer -(the public-you and me). They can sell our water to anyone, who can then sell it on to anyone again. It is a scandal and corrupt. Freshwater from our UK rivers, streams and water table is now called the 'Blue Gold' in the shares and investment market in this day and age and also is a rife worldwide trading proposition to other countries like the middle east and others who want precious freshwater at a price for irrigation, watering golf courses etc. Most of our UK Water companies are now foreign owned so you can see what is going to happen...if it isn't happening already...which i believe it is.
 
The Local rumour is that they are pumping out water from the borehole at copper mill lane and then sending it back to France(affinity is a French company) to produce bottled water.The Water Tankers coming out of the entrance are regular and often.They have a licence from the EA to remove massive amounts of water from the site,100,000 gallons a day was a number i seem to remember. Maybe we need to find out how much they paid for it?. People who fish the Colne have joked 'why would they want to drink Colne water because its so filthy'.But they are removing the water from source, the spring/chalk filtered water(superb quality) from the boreholes that should be feeding the rivers.
 
Rumours are fine, but no good if no-one acts upon them! We now have FOI which may well help in finding exactly what is true, and what is happening to the water from these rivers. Certainly worth finding out from the horses mouth, starting at what the EA know, and what permits have been given..
 
I tried doing the FOI path on a water company that supplied the public and private industry etc. OFWAT told me that they don't have to comply in telling you what toxic chemicals they use in treatment 'of the water or who their 'private' customers are. It is a scandal. As i found out, over a 'third of the Hampshire Avon river water is/was sold in bulk to businesses outside the area who could then do what they want with it, possibly selling it on to another business or exporting it to another country. As said a long time ago, there was a rumour that this Hampshire Avon water was being bulk loaded onto empty lined oil tankers at Southampton and exported back to Saudia Arabia to where it was pumped off and used for irrigation and watering their golf courses. I also found out that this is a common practice in the middle east in transporting fresh water via the empty oil tankers and ballast tanks from other countries as well. The freshwater trade is a massive worldwide business nowadays and is set to grow. It is the 'Blue Gold'....and Oil for Water... With most of our UK water companies now owned by foreign enterprises you can only come to one conclusion as to why this is. Also, when UK Fracking starts, (which most of the companies are foreign owned), they too will be sucking our rivers dry with permits from the EA, as the bulk water supply is the main necessity in Fracking, plus the multitude of toxic chemicals pumped into the ground.
 
As a youngster I can remember cycling from Pinner to fish the River Chess nr Chesham. Odd brownie and lovely rainbows.
Often at the road underpass tunnels.

Indeed my Mothers house had the Chess in her back garden. Inhabited by good fish and wonderful wildlife including Mandarin ducks and water voles.

By 1990 the river had reduced in flow considerably and even then talk of abstraction.

As one of maybe two places in the UK that rainbow trout bred naturally you would have thought it would have merited special EA status and protection.

Money talks, just not our rod licence money.
Shameful.
 
Worth a read sometime...
Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water
Paperback – September 1, 2005

'In this “chilling, in-depth examination of a rapidly emerging global crisis†(In These Times), Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, two of the most active opponents to the privatization of water show how, contrary to received wisdom, water mainly flows uphill to the wealthy. Our most basic resource may one day be limited: our consumption doubles every twenty years—twice the rate of population increase. At the same time, increasingly transnational corporations are plotting to control the world’s dwindling water supply. In England and France, where water has already been privatized, rates have soared, and water shortages have been severe. The major bottled-water producers—Perrier, Evian, Naya, and now Coca-Cola and PepsiCo—are part of one of the fastest-growing and least-regulated industries, buying up freshwater rights and drying up crucial supplies'.

A truly shocking exposé that is a call to arms to people around the world, Blue Gold shows in frightening detail why, as the vice president of the World Bank has pronounced, “The wars of the next century will be about wate.â€
 
Another...
‘To address England's growing water crisis, some political and corporate leaders are calling for large-scale exports of water from Scotland, by tanker and pipeline. Already, several British companies are exploring the possibility of water exports and one Scottish entrepreneur told The Scotsmail that Scottish companies are also interested. Complicating the political sensitivities is the fact that Scotland still has a publicly owned water system, while British water is run by privatized companies. Ironically, some of these companies have been lukewarm to exports because THE SCARCITY OF WATER IN ENGLAND HAS KEPT PRICES AND PROFITS HIGH.’
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Water/Global_Trade_BG.html
 
Having worked in the private side of a private-public partnership with government, unfortunately FOI did not apply to the private side so we would frequently turn down requests and then of course there is the 'commercial confidentiality' aspect. It is the law around FOI that needs enhancing but that ain't going to happen with the current bunch in charge.
 
pennywortcolne_zpskohvowvd.jpg
This is the lower river at Denham last November,the river has become bridged in lots of areas by an invasive species Pennywort,in areas with flow it struggles to stay but with the water so low lots of areas have become blocked,it gets worse every year.The pennywort deoxygenates the river and causes massive problems.At the moment there is no fix apart from cutting it out and burning it,it weighs tons.
pennywort_zpsvy2tzycg.jpg
 
Sorry tried to resize but edit time went out.The Pennywort here goes down about 2 feet below the water and is thick,it grows out up to 18 inches a day and is appearing/spreading all over the country , the Canal systems help spread it It slowly strangles the river to death. Being late November you would have hoped it was dying back but no.They are trying desperately to find a fix, a small bug from Argentina(Penntworts home country) seems the only answer after recent trials, but there are limited numbers(400 in the UK Lab).The Argentine government have now banned further export to the UK (possibly after the Top gear special)lol.
 
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