What defines a healthy river?

The Foundation for Water Research (FWR)’s Sustainable Wastewater Management Technical Panel recently held a roundtable discussion exploring the topic of healthy rivers, chaired by Oliver Grievson, FWR Vice Chair, who was joined by a range of professionals with expertise in the sector. The discussion explored the different ways of considering what defines a healthy river, and the tools, management practices, and regulatory frameworks that are needed to support the restoration of our rivers to support both ecological health and human wellbeing. A summary of the main discussion points can be viewed below.

Roundtable attendees

Michelle Walker, The Rivers Trust
Susanne Whittaker, Environment Agency
Jo Bradley, Stormwater Shepherds
Andrew Singer, UK Centre for Hydrology and Ecology
Simon Spooner, AtkinsRealis

Summary of discussion

What is a healthy river?

It is not always clear what is meant by a healthy river, and agreeing what we mean by this term is important for considering how we can best manage and restore our river environments for the benefit of people and nature.
Ecological health that supports effective ecosystem functioning should be a priority for defining river health, balanced with the need for improved water quality for human uses, such as bathing. This balance should be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the catchment/river in question.
Water quality is not enough to determine a healthy river. Other river characteristics, such as river morphology, flow rates etc., should be considered when supporting river health.
Restoring healthy rivers should focus not just on improving water quality, but also on unlocking multiple benefits, such as flood and drought reduction, increased biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. Nature-based solutions will be a key part of supporting the delivery of multiple benefits.

Barriers to healthy rivers

Issues that have gained traction in the media and public consciousness – like sewage discharges – need to be addressed for the sake of our rivers. However, these visible problems are often a symptom rather than the cause of poor river health. The whole system, in this case sewage and wastewater management, must be improved to alleviate the issues they cause to avoid sticking plaster solutions. A wider understanding of the different aspects of pollution sources is also important so we tackle not only the issues related to Combined Sewage Overflow (CSO) discharges, but also challenges related to diffuse pollution, such as urban runoff, agricultural and highways pollution.
Collecting the data needed to support identification of problems, and decide on appropriate solutions, is a challenge. Engagement with citizen scientists and local communities will be a useful tool in increasing monitoring capacity.
Risk aversion is a challenge: those with resources to invest in improving river health are often looking for clear return on investment, and for a variety of reasons – lack of monitoring, and effects of factors outside a specific improvement plan both being potential causes – this is not always possible. Measured risks must be taken now to avoid insurmountable issues in the future.

Catchment-based approaches

Catchment-based approaches are essential for realising integrated water management as they provide the framework for supporting integrated water management at the local scale. However, for catchment-based approaches to deliver they need to be given a stronger mandate and more funding.
Though there are benefits to thinking on a national scale and effecting change on this scale, it is important that the stakeholders within individual catchments are empowered to take action on a local level: if there is evidence of a problem, it must be addressed in its own context.
When working within a catchment, it’s crucial that all stakeholders have a seat at the table and are able to collaborate on solutions. Recognising the combined, multiple benefits of healthy rivers is key to engaging those with the power to work towards them.
The catchment partnership model is a useful way of developing strong local networks. However, they must be properly resourced to enable action – this includes budgeting for staff to coordinate network-building and long-term collaboration, and act as connectors between the range of personal and organisational interests that may be present in any given catchment.
Systems thinking is key. The health of a river is an expression of the whole catchment and its characteristics. A range of factors must be taken into account when developing management plans, such as local habitat health, flow regimes, soil health, and land use.
Radical change that reimagines how we interact with river systems, such as reversing the water cycle, could support development of sustainable river management that delivers benefits for people and nature. However, this would require transformation in the way we approach water management and would require investment in new infrastructure.

Funding and resourcing healthy rivers

It is essential that fines handed out to polluters are deterrents in the sense that they are large enough to avoid a ‘pay to pollute’ option. Ultimately, polluters would ideally be put in a position where it costs less to fix the issues causing pollution than to pay fines after the fact.
Money generated from fines should be earmarked to increase resourcing of efforts to improve river health. How the money should be distributed may depend on the stakeholders in a catchment, or indeed the scale of the pollution that has led to a fine if it has occurred beyond a single catchment.
Funding sources for different aspects of water resources management need to be used strategically to enable the widespread adoption of integrated water management and nature-based solutions that can deliver multiple benefits. Blended finance options which bring together diverse funding sources, such as water industry, government and private sector funding, could support more efficient use of resources and reduce perceived risk.
A great way to involve local communities in improving river health – while also lessening the financial burden on organisations working to do so – is to build networks of citizen scientists and other volunteer roles. They can be trained to collect data or take part in work to improve catchments, all while benefitting from time spent connecting to nature in their local area.

Monitoring to support improvement

There needs to be more robust freshwater monitoring, to fill evidence gaps, drive management improvements, and allow for identification of issues and priorities for action.
Citizen science data can support improved monitoring if support is in place to ensure citizen scientists are collecting the right data, in the right place, with the right methods. This will also support greater public engagement with the freshwater environment.
Monitoring aligned with Section 82 of the Environmental Protection Act enables issues to be identified and pieced together but still rely on proactive monitoring, or monitoring that takes place during pollution events. Remote monitoring systems would be more effective at capturing the real-time health of rivers and would ensure issues like pollution events were not missed.
Real-time monitoring has the added benefit of being able to immediately capture event-based pollution, making it easier to establish casual relationships between things like heavy rain on nearby roads and decreased river water quality in a catchment. With this evidence available, it may be easier to make the case for specific interventions.
With the above in mind, it is important that there are trusted bodies who can check and interpret monitoring data to ensure that objective conclusions are being drawn. This will require resourcing.

What are the priorities for improving river health?

Increase the scope and scale of freshwater monitoring, by increasing the breadth of what is being sampled and to develop long-term comparable data sets. This could be supported through increased citizen science engagement, especially with the development of new citizen science data standards.
Improve data availability and fill evidence gaps – if you can define the problem, you can do something about it. By combining data from a range of sectors, such as citizen science, public sector bodies and water companies, a weight of evidence would be produced that would be much harder to ignore.
Stronger enforcement of regulations is needed to ensure compliance and encourage improved management. Regulations must also reflect the full spectrum of different pollution sources. We must move from ‘pollution pays’ to ‘polluter pays’, and for this to work we must develop a system whereby protecting and restoring the environment is aligned with supporting businesses. Regulatory enforcement and evidence go hand in hand – if we don’t have the evidence, we can’t support enforcement.
Properly resource catchment-based partnerships and give them a stronger mandate so that they can support integrated water management at the local level. This can support realisation of nature-based solutions with multiple benefits and more efficient use of funding streams. Leveraging available funding across different sources in the most effective way will be a key part of unlocking improvements for our water environment.
Highlight the role of healthy soil in river catchments, including in agricultural fields, not just along riverbanks. Evidence is needed to highlight the impact of healthy soils in its ability to improve water quality and store water.
Explore how transformative approaches to our water sector can support sustainable water resources management aligned with a circular economy that delivers for people and nature. This will require innovation and creative thinking. For example, we might explore taking water as far downstream as possible, in order to leave water in our rivers for longer, before treating it and returning it back upstream. Radical change should be explored and considered.

Next steps

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