Thousands of people across the UK took water testing into their own hands in mid-September, examining the rivers, streams, lakes and canals where they fish, swim and live beside, as part of the biggest Great UK WaterBlitz to date.
Almost 7,000 testing kits were distributed across the country for the four-day WaterBlitz, run by Earthwatch Europe in collaboration with Avaaz. Participants test for nitrates and phosphates, while a smaller group also collects samples for PFAS – or “forever chemicals” – for analysis by Imperial College London.
Claire Williams, from Earthwatch Europe’s Freshwater Watch team, said: “What makes the WaterBlitz so valuable is that people are testing the waters they actually use and care about – including places that can fall through the gaps of official monitoring. Put together, thousands of local tests can show us where our waterways are under pressure and where we need to look more closely.”
Across the country, communities organised themselves around the waters they care about – from Scout groups in Devon and a cancer support group in Derry to anglers, wild swimmers, families and residents taking to the water by boat in Canterbury.
Politicians also joined local testing events across the country, as scrutiny grows over whether the Clean Water Bill will match the scale of public concern about water pollution.
Sarah Olney MP said: “At the start of summer, Ham and Kingston riverside received bathing water designation but already toxic algae has been found in the water, while Thames Water wants to dump treated sewage in the river just up the road.
“The volunteers participating across the country in the Great UK WaterBlitz are doing a better job at holding water companies to account than many of the formal authorities.”
Those concerns are feeding into the expectations for the Clean Water Bill, which the government says will bring a major overhaul of water regulation, including a new integrated regulator.
The WaterBlitz also points to pollution far beyond sewage alone. Participants tested for nitrates and phosphates, pollutants that can reflect pressures from agriculture as well as wastewater.
MP Dr Ellie Chowns MP added: “Water pollution is a national scandal, and tackling it means dealing with both sewage and agricultural pollution. Rivers and lakes don’t care whether pollution comes from a pipe or a field,and the law shouldn’t either. The Clean Water Bill must tackle both, with strong rules, proper enforcement and more support for farmers to move to river-friendly farming.”
For the first time, selected volunteers are also collecting samples for PFAS analysis by Imperial College London, bringing a less visible form of pollution into the WaterBlitz.
Leon Barron, Professor of Analytical & Environmental Sciences at Imperial College London, said: “PFAS are the pollution you can’t see. A river can look clean and still contain these highly persistent chemicals. Bringing PFAS testing into the WaterBlitz for the first time lets us look beneath the surface at a form of pollution that can otherwise go unnoticed.”
The full WaterBlitz and PFAS results will come later this year, but the scale of participation is already putting the future of Britain’s waterways firmly in the spotlight.
