River Action Judicial Review over Wye pollution begins

River Action’s Judicial Review case against the Environment Agency and Defra over agricultural pollution in the River Wye began last week in court in Cardiff.

River Action argues that, by failing to enforce environmental regulations the Farming Rules for Water, the Environment Agency has acted unlawfully. In doing so, it has failed to protect the Special Area of Conservation of the River Wye from huge levels of diffuse agricultural pollution causing much of the recent ecological collapse of the river.

Much of the pollution derives from intense poultry production in the Wye Valley, where River Action said there are as many as 24 million birds reared at any one time. The waste from these chickens is spread on local land, leading to intense levels of phosphorous in the river.

River Action chair Charles Watson said: “If the law to prevent nutrient over-saturation had been properly enforced, then we argue that the horrendous pollution of the Wye catchment could have largely been prevented. However, we believe effective lobbying by the National Farmers Union led to Defra instructing the Environment Agency to ignore enforcing this critical protection – effectively giving the intensive poultry industry carte blanche to dump the manure they produce across the Wye Valley, thus causing untold environmental damage to the River Wye. Endangered species like the Atlantic Salmon are on the cusp of localised extinction. We are asking for something very simple of the Government: please enforce the law.”