So, I was delighted to be told that I’d be bumping into Feargal last week on the Lea. What would he be like, I wondered? If I had doubts, they were bowled away in seconds. He was accessible, warm, and uniquely clued up about his north London patch and my Norfolk issues to boot. We talked long and hard about his rivers, my rivers and rivers everywhere.
The bottom line is that we are taking too much water out of the aquifer, that precious groundwater, which feeds all chalk streams. As a society we use more than we need to and we waste as much as we use. Each and every one of us consumes double the amount of a Dane in Copenhagen each and every day. Add the demands of industry and agriculture and it easy to see why so many of our water courses are in big trouble. These autumnal rains have come in time to mask the problem but we do well to remember the summer gone when flows were piddling and some rivers, like the Stour, disappeared altogether. Indeed, Feargal told me that all the water in the upper Lea comes from Luton sewage works and without that outflow the river would dry completely.
It’s what to do that is the question? First up, as a nation, we need to look at countries that use far less water than we do per head. We have to start being bright and on the ball about this. Secondly we must consider the provision of reservoirs. There was talk of a reservoir here in Norfolk back in the 1930s. Way back then the future need for an enhanced water supply was recognised but, typically, no money was spent on essential infra structure. It is not just the roads, the railways and the NHS that are groaning throughout the UK believe me.
Of course, if all our rivers are abstracted to oblivion as we build more and more houses it us anglers that lose out first of all. No longer will we whirl our pins for roach, chub and barbel. But then no one will see kingfishers or mayflies any more. And then, finally, when the taps run dry, the great sleeping apathetic nation we live in will shake itself and far, far too late begin to ask questions.
Rock on Feargal is what I say. He is an angler..we are anglers..let’s for once begin to make our voices heard.