Around 50 Ealing members of the Clean Up the River Brent campaign (CURB) joined with over 15,000 people to take part in a central London protest on Sunday (3 November 2024) to highlight their concerns about the rise of water pollution and the impact it has on British waterways.
The march was called for by a number of people including musician turned environmental activist Feargal Sharkey.
March for Clean Water, organised by River Action UK saw Mr Sharkey leading “a coalition of the concerned” to demand that the government take immediate action to stop the pollution of rivers, lakes and seas from raw sewage, agricultural waste and other chemical pollutants.
Ben Morris, a trustee of the Brent River Park charity and founder of the Clean Up The River Brent campaign (CURB) has been working with litter picking group LagerCan and other volunteers to pull tons of rubbish from the river since 2021.
Mr Morris explained why he and his campaign group were there: ““It’s astonishing that there are thousands of properties in the capital whose raw sewage is piped directly into rivers, without even seeing a treatment works. There are 5 such buildings on the Brent, and our volunteers have counted the wet-wipes and sampled the water to prove it.”
Mr Morris added: “These cases represent a complete failure of Property and Environmental regulation, and we call on the Local Authorities, Thames Water, the Environment Agency, and Property Owners, working with the Mayoral Authority, to sit down and sort this problem out once and for all.”
Steven Toft, trustee, Brent River Park charity commented: “It’s now possible to build new housing and commercial developments with foul water flushing straight into the rivers and nobody notices until it’s too late. It’s hardly surprising that our rivers are full of effluent when the regulatory regime is so ineffective.”
Mr Toft added: “The only way to deal with this is tougher laws and stronger enforcement. As long as it is easy to cut costs by dumping sewage into rivers, people will continue to do it.”
 joined with around 15,000 people to take part in a protest in central London on Sunday (3 November 2024) to highlight their concerns about the rise of water pollution and the impact it has on British waterways. ){kind=link}