The River Wye - Meeting Nov 25th 2022

Mike Dunsbee and Nick Day have been working with politicians, regulators, Welsh Water and other groups over the past 18months to publicise and help solve the problems of water quality and particularly phosphate content of the River Wye. 

You can access the presentations made here

Environment Agency
Regenerative farming - (REGEN Ben)
Gary Yeomans - Pant Farm
Avara Foods - see Phosphate plan
Welsh Cymru

Phosphate plan - Avara Foods, published Jan 2023 a commitment to reduce the impact of Avara foods suppliers on the river. 

NRW was invited but were unable to send a representative, they did send in an interesting status paper which can be found here 

From the meeting it is apparent that Welsh Water is investing to reduce the phosphate released from its large sewer treatment works.

The farming industry appears to be responsible for 60-70% of the phosphate reaching the rivers leading to algal blooms and eutrophication. Regenerative farming is part of the solution for general agriculture - see Regen Ben.

A follow up evening concentrating on the response of the NRW and Environment Agency on the problems of the Wye is planned for May 2023 and a follow up general meeting again in November 2023.

Documents of Interest

Hereford Wildlife Trust report January 2022
Provides a useful synopsis of the state of the river in late 2021.  

RePhoKUs project report May 2022
By Lancaster University, includes detailed analysis of the phosphorus in the Wye Catchment area and discussion with stakeholders in the river basin including the agriculture section.

First Minister SAC River Summit Summit July 2022 

Held at the Welsh Show, this report was a summary of status of phosphates in Rivers designated Special Conservation Areas  contains much of the detail from the RePoKUs report. 
Intention of the Summit was to discuss "collaboratively and collectively" measures leading to improvements in failing SAC rivers, such as the River Wye

See also the website of the Wye and Usk Foundation