Plans to use £180,000 to protect and restore three waterways in the Chichester area have been approved by the district council.
But councillors were warned that the project would not solve the ‘disfunctional regulation’ of water companies when it came to sewage spills.
During a meeting of the annual council, members agreed that the money be put towards the Arun and Rother Rivers Trust’s (ARRT) Chalk Stream Resilience project.
The ARRT is one of a national network of river trusts that aim to protect and restore rivers and streams – in this case the rivers Ems and Lavant and the Hambrook stream.
The money – £60,000 of general reserves per year for three years – will part-fund two chalk stream resilience officers, one focusing on the Ems and Hambrook and a second on the Lavant.
Jonathan Brown, cabinet member for environmental strategy, said the council’s Local Plan sought to protect the waterways, but added:
“Protection is not sufficient. We also need nature recovery. They’re already suffering from pollution, habitat loss, drought, interruptions to natural processes and flow and, in the case of the Ems, over-abstraction.”
All three waterways feed into Chichester Harbour, making the impact of the restoration projects wider than just the rivers and stream themselves.
Mr Brown stressed that it was important the council didn’t ‘over-promise’.
He said:
“The plan will not solve structural issues around the dysfunctional regulation of the water companies, both in relation to abstraction and ongoing sewage spills – particularly relevant for the Ems and the Lavant.
“But this can only give us more leverage in talks with the Environment Agency and Ofwat.
“The higher we can raise the profile of these chalk streams and the more work that we’re doing on them, the more data we have, the more we can push them up the agenda of these regulatory bodies.”
While supporting the project, Roy Briscoe (Con, Westbourne) raised concerns about the amount of water being abstracted by Portsmouth Water from the chalk aquifer beneath the Ems.
He told the meeting that 20 megalitres – enough to fill eight Olympic-size swimming pools or 200,000 bath tubs – was being taken every day.
Mr Briscoe added:
“It’s no wonder the river now dries up from Walberton to Westbourne every summer.
“How can we restore a river that’s not got any water in it?”
The principal aim of the ARRT’s work is to restore the natural function in river channels, to tackle invasive non-native species, and to carry out ‘re-meandering’ on rivers which have been artificially straightened.
The project also works with landowners and the community to carry out citizen science monitoring of water quality, biodiversity and incident reporting.
They also run events to build community engagement and understanding of the issues affecting the rivers.
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