the fight of two retirees to stop the pollution of a river

The river they want to save is called the Deben, which crosses the east of England before flowing into the North Sea. On its way, is the town of Woodbridge, 7,000 inhabitants among whom are Ruth Leach and Caroline Page, two followers of bathing in the river, “as it has always been donethey say to the Times, since the Vikings landed in this estuary”. But in recent years, the water has changed color, smell, polluted, soiled by continuous and totally uncontrolled discharges.

What happens to the River Deben speaks for all the rivers in England, which have become cesspools due to the lack of maintenance of the sewage recovery systems. Agricultural inputs, chemical products…, everything is poured into it, and it is a real scourge that is the subject of reports every week in Great Britain, because of the cases of various contaminations that this entails on health. inhabitants.

Through the right to bathe, it is the right of the river, its fish, its birds that we are defending.

Ruth Leach and Caroline Page, co-founder of Save the Deben

at Times

“It’s the only way to control this pollution”

A scandal that no government wanted to tackle, the only response given being the ban on bathing. For lack of action on the part of the authorities, Ruth Leach and Caroline Page therefore set up their Save the Deben association. They started by taking samples, having them analyzed, and repeating the operation every week to assess the quality of the water. Result: levels of the bacterium Escherichia coli well above the authorized thresholds, proof if necessary of a permanent discharge of untreated wastewater into the river.

They then gathered testimonials from hundreds of swimmers, then compiled a file which they submitted to the Ministry of the Environment to obtain the status of “bathing area”, because only this status obliges the authorities to monitor the quality of water, locate the sources of pollution and therefore prosecute the polluters. They submitted applications from two different areas, and the verdict has just come in: one has been accepted and will therefore be protected, the other has been rejected “because of too few bathers concerned“.

But the two retirees are optimistic and announce to the BBC that they will re-submit a file, “because it is the only way to control this pollution, and through the right to bathe, it is the right of the river, its fish, its birds that we are defending.“