• Question: What causes the most pollution in rivers? and how can we help?

    Asked by anon-276203 to Alistair on 12 Jan 2021.
    • Photo: Alistair Young

      Alistair Young answered on 12 Jan 2021: last edited 12 Jan 2021 10:05 am

      There are two main things that cause pollution in our rivers – first is untreated sewage being ‘dumped’ into the river when the sewage works get overwhelmed at times of heavy rain. As well as being unpleasant, the sewage can include output from factories and has harmful chemicals and overwhelming amounts of such as nitrogen which are very harmful to plants and animals in the water. If you haven’t seen before, there is a web site which lets you see how often sewage treatment works overflow at https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/555f3807d2a1499cbbf5ca2dd58df0f3 .
      The second most polluting thing is water runoff from farms, roads and streets – that runoff often bypasses any treatment works and carries oil and muck from the roads, or chemicals such as fertiliser from farms – all harmful and difficult to eliminate.
      Everyone can help by making sure they don’t overload the sewage system by putting things down the drain that cause blockages or are hard to process, like baby buds or wet wipes … or too much oil and fat from cooking.

Comments

  • Photo: Steve

    Steve commented on :

    The nature of the pollution will vary often depending upon the geographical position of the river. I live in a very rural area where the main cause of pollution of the runoff from local farms which includes waste from animals and chemicals used for fertilizer etc. We get no industrial waste being a rural area. Hence my first sentence

  • Photo: Hazel

    Hazel commented on :

    In our village we also had case of people dumping things on or near streams and rivers, things like washing machines! If you see anything like this, or any oil on the water you can report it to your local parish/town council or the Environment Agency to get some action on it. they really appreciate people reporting these things to them so that they can keep the water clean.