Today I am posting a guest blog by Ali Morse – water policy director at the Wildlife Trust and chair at Blueprint for Water – on why it is so important to ensure our new, ambitious phosphorus reduction targets are applied to the parts of the landscape where we will see the greatest ecological benefit for the money spent. It’s astonishing to think that although we have been spending millions reducing phosphorus from sewage (66% reduction 1995 to 2020 … and now a new target of 80% reduction 2020 to 2038) we still haven’t found a way to ensure that we reduce phosphorus from the small works in the upper reaches of rivers where the reductions would have the greatest ecological outcome. Essentially, ever since the UWWTD (Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive) was passed to drive these reductions, cost-effectiveness has been measured by population attached to a given works as opposed to for example: % length of river d’stream of the pollution source, or the volume of flow in the receiving waterbody relative to the volume of flow from the pollution. This doesn’t make sense. We create targets to reduce phosphorus because it has a negative ecological impact: the primary outcome should surely be, therefore, to minimise the ecological impact, regardless of the local population size. In practice we reduce phosphorus in such a way that the ecological impact its secondary to accounting methodologies. This means we have rivers like the Frome in Dorset (a SSSI chalk stream) where the phosphorus concentrations go down as you travel downstream and are lowest just above the estuary (see the map below which I drew up when working on the chalk stream strategy, (based on 2016 WFD data)). It cannot be rocket science to find some simple policy drivers that would make the difference. All the river-oriented eNGOs should take a united front on this in my view, change the raw-sewage record for a few turns of the dance floor, and implore government to develop a way to maximise the ecological outcome for their ambitious Environment Act targets.

Here’s Ali’s excellent blog, first paragraph with a link across to the Wildlife Trusts site:

“In November 2021, the Environment Act became law and, with it, the promise of ambitious targets that would turn the tide on nature’s decline. Early last year, new regulations set out the detail of targets on water[i], waste, woodland and other topics that all contribute to the overarching and ambitious ‘apex’ goal, of seeing declines in species abundance halted by 2030.

For our watery habitats, the targets are intended to tackle the key pressures against which there has been stubbornly little progress to date. Nutrient pollution is a key factor that blights the freshwater environment, not just in England but around the globe. Although there are downsides to having targets on specific, potentially siloed topics, the logic of seeking to drive action on THE greatest pressure faced by our rivers, lakes and coastal waters is understandable. In freshwaters, phosphate is the pollutant causing the greatest number of failures against ecological standards. It’s a reason that more than half of England’s rivers, and three quarters of lakes, are assessed as not being in good health.

Of particular concern is the impact of phosphate pollution upon England’s chalk streams …”

CONTINUED HERE