River Lea Catchment Partnership Extraordinary Meeting announced

HMWT have announced that there will be an Extraordinary Meeting of the River Lea Catchment Partnership on Wednesday 29th November, 2.00 – 5.00pm, at the Welwyn Civic Centre. Tickets can be obtained here.

The meeting will be hosted by Tim Hill, Conservation Director of HMWT and will include;

An overview of River Basin Management Plan Progress and WFD Classification Data (2019 – 2022). With context for the Upper and Lower Lea Catchments including: How EA is looking to implement river basin mgt planning at a catchment level from Darsha Gill, Area Director (Herts & North London) at Environment Agency 

AnUpdate on the draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 (WRMP24) and draft Business Plan (2025 – 2030) from Ellie Powers, Head of Water Resources & Environment at Affinity Water

An update on the draft Drainage & Wastewater Management Plan (2025 – 2050) and WINEP (WRMP24) – Tim Beech, Environmental Partnerships Lead at Thames Water.

HMWT have also announced an interactive workshop on 4th December in Wheathampstead, saying;

This highly participatory session will be facilitated by external specialists Heritage Insider and will include sharing and revisiting the partnership vision and objectives, considering what partners expect, need and want from the partnership and how this aligns with the current resourcing and how it is run. As well as being an enjoyable session, this should also be an excellent networking opportunity.

The aim of this workshop is to discuss with stakeholders in the River Lea Catchment Partnership what their hopes, expectations and concerns are. This will help clarify the roles of the different organisations and stakeholders involved in the partnership and create a Terms of Reference for each partnership (Lower Lea and Upper Lea).

Tickets for this event can be obtained here.

A letter to the Environment Agency

In October, FORQ wrote to the Environment Agency, further pursuing the questions we asked of our MP and President Sir Oliver Heald and in our view, unsatisfactorily answered by Rebecca Pow – see here.

Our email said:

From: Mark Wilkinson
Date: 18 October 2023 at 14:43:04 BST
To: HNLSustainablePlaces@environment-agency.gov.uk
Cc: Communications FORQ
Subject: Water resources, biodiversity and development in East Hertfordshire

Dear Becki,

As both a concerned resident of North East Hertfordshire and as chair of Friends of the Rib & Quin – a community group founded specifically to raise awareness and concerns for the future of our local chalk streams, I wonder if you can help me.

Over recent years we have investigated much of the publicly available data relating to our catchment, much of it generated or curated by the EA, which highlight a number of areas of concern that I trust areas of particular focus as Water Management Plans are developed.

We have found that abstraction is disproportionate across Hertfordshire, both in terms of catchment and population size. Herts Chalkstreams are abstracted at levels far in excess of the 10% recommended as the maximum percentage of annual recharge in the Chalkstream Recovery Plan. In our particular catchment’s case, our abstraction levels are particularly disproportionate to our population.

We have found that raw sewage spill pollution events in East Hertfordshire represent over 90% of Hertfordshire storm overflow events, with over 50% in Sir Oliver Heald’s constituency alone. We’ve also found that phosphate from Buntingford STW, as an example, has been releasing excessive levels of phosphate for over 30 years, with still no remedy in place.

With these obvious deficiencies in infrastructure and resource to support the existing population of East Hertfordshire, we wonder why the Environment Agency has recommended against further development in Cambridgeshire and yet has made no similar objections to developments in East Hertfordshire at Buntingford, Barkway and Ware.

Your help in understanding these issues, decisions and discrepancies would be of great interest to our members. I greatly appreciate your help in reaching that understanding.

Best wishes

Mark

As yet, we have not received a reply, but will share the Environment Agency response as and when we receive one.

Standon A120 Bridge Riverfly Monitoring – October 2023

Site: Standon A120 Bridge, River Rib
Recorders: Nic Bartrop, Toby Spencer
Survey date: 23rd October 2023
Time: 1400hrs
Air temperature:
Water Temperature: 10ºC
Weather:
Flow: 3
Phosphate:0.72
Nitrate: 5
Nitrite: 0

Cased Caddisfly	100	3
Caseless caddisfly	2	1
Burrowing Mayfly (Ephemeridae)	4	1
BWO (Ephemerellidae)	4	1
Olives (Baetidae)	22	2
Stoneflies	0	0
Shrimps (Gammarus)	65	2
	Score	10
Bullheads 2, sticklebacks 2, snails (lots), damselfly larvae, non-biting midge 16, water measurer, pond skater, whirly gig 2