CaBALondon 11 Polly Bryant, South East Rivers Trust
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Pollution Patrol is a volunteer monitoring partnership project between South East Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency
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CaBALondon 11 Polly Bryant, South East Rivers Trust
- 3. POLLUTION PATROL NIRS Report SPOC Pollution Assessment Volunteer Incident Assessment Report Form
- 4. THE PROJECT Protect the natural environment Specific events or occurrences that cause or have the potential to cause harm 100 26000 802
- 5. THE PILOT PROJECT 50 volunteers trained 19 incidents attended YEAR ONE
- 6. Hogsmill EXPANSION Beverley Brook 20 volunteers 16 outfalls 10 volunteers 64 reports 6 outfalls
- 7. PROBLEMATIC OUTFALLS 300,000 properties misconnected nationally 63,000 properties misconnected in the Thames area =
- 9. PROBLEMATIC OUTFALLS Sewage Fungus Misconnections Debris
- 10. PROBLEMATIC OUTFALLS 25 outfalls 400 reports
- 11. STORM TANKS
- 12. STORM TANKS
- 13. LESSONS LEARNT Pollution is a great motivator Making a difference Flexible commitment Extra training
- 14. POLLUTION PATROL 25 outfalls monitored weekly 3 rivers 70 active volunteers 1000volunteers hours Live Long & Prosper
Editor's Notes
- Polly Bryant – Volunteer Community Engagement Officer at SERT Talking about Pollution Patrol, a collaborative project with the Environment Agency to tackle urban pollution We all know the issues of urban pollution and since I only have ten minutes I am not going to go into these. I’m going to focus on how our project works and lessons we have learnt through delivery So how does it work?
- Volunteers are trained to recognise pollution, different types, including signs of pollution such as sewage fungus and fish in distress. Joe blogs is walking along and spots pollution on the ground and calls the EA Environmental Incident number 0800 80 70 60.
- This generates a national incident report in the central EA offices. Depending on the location, these reports are sent to the relevant EA local officer – in this case we are saying the Wandle. On receiving the report, the local officer assesses the category – how severe is the incident? Fish in distress? And if they believe the incident to be a category 3 or 4 (minor or minimal impact) they will use our Pollution Patrol scheme. The local EA officer will the South East Rivers Trust single point of contact – aka SPOC which happens to be me. Ta da. I download the details – location, what was reported, when etc. And I then look through my database of trained volunteers to find one in the area and give them a call. Sometimes we call through several before we reach someone who is available but when I do, I then pass on the report to them and send them out to investigate. They assess the incident, report back to me and I feed this back to the EA who can then take action if necessary.
- Why is it so useful? Many minor pollution incidents go unchecked. EA local officers have a very large catchment often by the time they travel to the report site, it has been washed away and is untraceable. Having the PAVs is a valuable asset allowing more incidents to be attended and assessed. Furthermore it raises awareness of pollution, and sigs of in the wider community. There are an estimated 100 Environmental incidents a day. In 2011, 26000 of these caused damage to the environment And 802 were recommended for prosecution. Responding to all these incidents can be logistical challenge for the EA and the local officers on the ground. With such large catchments, some of the more minor pollution incidents are likely to have disappeared and washed away by the time a local officer is able to reach the site. And this is why we teamed up to trial a project engaging volunteers.
- Our Project was first piloted on the Wandle, funded for 3 years by the Environment Agency. 50 volunteers were trained and 19 incidents were attended – that’s 19 more than would have been attended without the project. The project even won a Rivers Trust award for Science and Innovation.
- With the success of the pilot, it was expanded onto two other rivers – Hogsmill and Beverley Brook. Here a further 26 volunteers were trained giving a PAV task force of 76!
- One lesson we learnt quickly was that incidents weren’t enough to keep volunteers engaged. So we expanded the project to tackle misconnections in the catchment. It is estimated that there are 300,00 properties misconnected nationally. It is estimated that there are 63,000 properties misconnected in the Thames area. Nationally, the equivalent of 16 Olympic sized swimming pools full of sewage drains to our rivers and streams every day!
- Thames Water have a programme to identify and correct these misconnections in their catchment - Surface Water Outfall Program. When an outfall is identified to be a problem, it is added to this programme and investigated. It can take years to trace a problem back to one single misconnection in such an urban environment.
- Our volunteers are helping this process by “adopting” a polluting outfall near them and checking it once a week for signs of chronic pollution such as sewage fungus. I collate these reports into a spreadsheet which tracks which outfalls are polluting when which the EA can then use to help Thames Water trace misconnections and prioritise which ones need investigating.
- This side of the project has been hugely successful, both identifying new polluting outfalls and leading to them being fixed. Currently we have 25 outfalls being monitored on the three rivers with 400 reports submitted so far.
- One final part I wanted to touch on is our work on the Storm Tanks on the Hogsmill river. There are two storm tanks on the Hogsmill – both used to temporarily store overflow from the STW in times of flood. The untreated sewage is pumped into these and held until the STW works is ready to deal with it again. However in times of prolonged flood, if they too become full they will discharge raw sewage into the river. We have been working with Thames Water and the EA to find out how often this is happening and the effect, using citizen science.
- We want to work out the effect of these tanks on the river – find out how often they discharge into the river. To do this, we need the outfalls of these tanks to be monitoring once a week for signs of discharge – likely debris in the river – and also to check the tanks after heavy rainfall so we know how long it takes before they have to discharge into the Hogsmill. Both outfalls are now being photographed on a weekly basis and Thames Water have cleared the grates for us. This means the next time we see rags stuck in the rails, we know they have been discharging. In addition, the tanks have sensors which have been collecting data on the levels in the tanks for many years which Thames Water have kindly given us to analyse. A report it currently being produced to show how frequent these discharge events are with the hope of determining whether the tanks need to be upgraded.
- Having run this project now for just over two years a number of things have become clear to us. 1. Pollution is a great motivator. Local communities become outraged when they see visible signs of pollution. Large destructive incidents are very visual with fish kills and these provoke people to want to take action. This is why I believe the project has been such a success – particularly on the Wandle which has had a chequered history with pollution incidents as recently as the 2008 bleach incident which wiped out 10km of river killing 10, 000 fish. 2. Volunteers like to know they are making a difference – monitoring these outfalls on a weekly basis and hearing feedback on their reports is a great way to keep them motivated. We share success stories with them all so they know that although it may be slow, their evidence is helping us improve water quality in the long term. 3. The commitment is flexible. Volunteers can take on as much or as little as they have time for. There is no time commitment needed to join the scheme. 4. Future training – our volunteers are keen to learn more. This is why in our training we go into the details of what happens when organic pollution is added to the river so they understand why this results in suffocation of fish in some cases. We also offer additional training with the EA – we are currently organising fish ID course.
- So to sum up: 3 rivers, 70 active volunteers, 25 outfalls being monitored weekly Total of 700 volunteer hours Plans to continue
- Any questions?