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'It's filthy': Feargal Sharkey and LBC find South Yorkshire's iconic River Don fails series of environmental tests
18 October 2024, 07:44
Feargal Sharkey tests the River Don
In the latest edition of Feargal on Friday, LBC has found that one of the UK’s most iconic rivers has failed a series of key environmental tests.
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This week, Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones frontman and influential environmental campaigner, travelled to Swinton in South Yorkshire to test the River Don, a 70-mile stretch of water running through cities such as Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster, which became a pillar for transporting goods such as steel during the Industrial Revolution.
There, he tested for a litany of bugs and pollutants, once again placing the Environment Agency and the regional water company, Yorkshire Water, under the microscope.
And the findings make for truly grim reading.
The most concerning result Mr Sharkey uncovered was when testing for phosphates in the river.
If a river contains elevated levels of phosphates, it can result in the development of blue-green algae, a highly toxic constellation of microscopic organisms, which can cause illness in humans and be fatal for wildlife.
Alarmingly, the readings taken were almost three times higher than the upper limit permitted by the Environment Agency.
“It doesn’t need to be like this,” an exasperated Mr Sharkey told LBC after seeing the result for phosphates in the River Don.
Phosphates are often deposited when water companies discharge sewage in rivers. As Mr Sharkey points out, however, the problem could be abated by these firms with additional investment, something which he believes is being stymied by Yorkshire Water’s £6.4bn worth of debt.
“It is possible for water companies to strip it out, the technology exists, but here’s the thing: that’s going to cost money.
“The company involved [here] is Yorkshire Water… almost a fifth of your bill is now going to pay interest on the debt that company has got itself into.”
The River Don also failed in the two further tests conducted by LBC.
The presence of nitrates was registered ten parts per million (PPM) - double the amount deemed ‘excessive’ by the regulator.
Read more: Feargal Sharkey exposes dangerous levels of E. coli in British rivers
Meanwhile, ammonia, a substance which is indicative of the presence of human urine and feces, was detected at 0.59 PPM - twice the level at which the water becomes toxic to the wildlife inhabiting it.
Lamenting the results, Mr Sharkey turned to the river’s appearance.
“It’s brown, it’s murky, it’s filthy looking [and] the first thing we saw was a tyre that’s been dumped into the river,” he said.
“Right here in this little brook, 2,576 hours’ worth of sewage were dumped from the local sewage works - that is the equivalent of 107 days, non-stop, 24 hours a day, of sewage being dumped into that river.”
The River Don was the third river to fail the tests carried out during Feargal on Friday. Only the River Wye has thus far passed Mr Sharkey’s examinations, with the Avon and Severn both failing comprehensively.
In response to LBC’s investigation, a spokesperson for Yorkshire Water said: “We’re committed to improving river health and are currently investing £180m to reduce storm overflow usage across Yorkshire, including overflows discharging into the river Don.
“This is alongside a £500m investment over the last five years to reduce Phosphorus, which is a normal part of domestic sewage due to its presence in detergents and other cleaning products, entering Yorkshire’s watercourses in treated effluent which is returned to the environment.
“We have also submitted plans to Ofwat to invest a further £1.4bn to reduce overflows in the next five years, as part of our largest ever environmental investment.”
