Ruscombe Brook meeting success: potential horrors of sewage explored

On Wednesday 31st January, 25 people were at Ebley Mill Council Chamber to discuss setting up a partnership between the Ruscombe Brook Action Group, SDC and other agencies to improve the biodiversity, water quality and enjoyment of the Ruscombe brook.

Photo: presentation in Council Chamber

I organised the meeting on behalf of RBAG - we need a partnership if we are to seek funding and agree the best way forward. SDC's Drainage Officer Bob Nightingale has been immensely helpful since our group formed - giving advice etc - he organised the venue for us - we then sent out all the invites and were fortunate to have a good selection of councillors plus key Officers including the Chief Executive turn up.

Cllr Laurence Carmichael who is now a Cabinet member, kindly accepted our invite to chair - her ward borders the brook and she has been very supportive of the project.

I kicked off with a presentation of the project so far which has included involvement with local schools, a planned joint leaflet with Severn Trent and a conference last year at Ebley Mill which over 70 local people attended - see 5th January Blog for summary.

Helen Patrick, one of the group members whose home backs onto the brook then outlined our next steps forward - plans for the partnership of stakeholders similar to the Dorset-based Bourne Partnership who led a seminar we organised at Ebley Mill last year. Then considering an exciting offer from Water 21 to scope what needs to be done along the brook: the offer is for at least £3000 worth of assessment to look at what should be the prioritioes, what is possible etc.

We were then extreemly fortunate to have a presentation by Professor and Consultant Hugh Barr, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Bioscience at Cranfield University on his work looking at water quality - his presentation was shocking to say the least.

Photo: Julian Jones, Water 21 and Professor Hugh Barr

I hope to write more on this in the future but his concern is that the sewage entering our waterways could be much more dangerous than we have thought in the past - incredibly there are 100,000 consented outflows of pathogenic waste discharges into brooks and rivers in England and Wales each year - plus thousands of other discharges. There are, as noted before, no standards in the UK for pathogenic material in our waterways!

After Hugh came Julian Jones, from Water 21, who has also been immensely supportive of the project - he outlined previous work with which he had been involved including a reed bed project in Southern Sudan. He also talked about how the reed beds worked and possibilities for the brook - he also highlighted one particularly interesting local project that sadly didn't happen - a small hamlet that was looking to go on mains sewers - Julian put a £25,000 alternative proposal together for reed beds to deal with all their sewage - the biomass crop they would produce would also be enough to provide significant amounts of the homes energy. Sadly they chose the £250,000 route to go onto mains sewers - ten times the cost!

Julian also outlined the survey work of the brook taking account of stakeholder needs. This would then allow the Partnership to explore funding opportunities to make the improvements suggested.

We finished with discussions and agreement to form a partnership - a few more details to tidy up but basically it's a goer and we can also then proceed with Water 21s offer. Great stuff - My hope is that if this model of partnership and community involvement is successful it might be possible to repeat it along other watercourses in the District.