Latest river monitoring data released today by the Environment Agency shows little progress in protecting rivers, according to UK river charity
The Rivers Trust is calling for comprehensive monitoring of all rivers and chemicals, including the use of citizen science data
Risk-based monitoring is not enough to identify the issues and take necessary action, the charity's experts say

Today's announcement from The Environment Agency that just 14% of water bodies in England are in good ecological health is deeply worrying and marks a 2% drop since 2019 revealing no progress has been made to improve the state of our rivers in the last six years. The Environment Agency testing that determines the classification of waterbodies shows gaps that need urgently addressing - a data analysis methodology that sees sites deemed to be low-risk missing out on continued attention and an outdated list of tested chemicals means the prevalence of many emerging contaminants of concern is not accurately known.

The Rivers Trust is calling for the integrated approach to water management as promised by the Government’s water white paper that draws together data from a diverse range of sources – from regulatory measures to citizen science and remote sensing technologies – to fill these gaps, reduce costs and environmental risks. Shifting water management from reactive compliance to proactive resilience should be a top priority.

Whilst we are glad to see extra risk-based monitoring, without joining this up with other data collection methods, this will see rivers that are deemed low-risk missing out on appropriate long-term attention. We are calling on the Environment Agency to release the full site level data so that we can understand how and where the data has been collected to build a bigger picture on the state of our rivers. As it stands, we cannot see what sites went into making up a waterbody classification and so do not know whether potential issues are being missed in different areas of a catchment.

We are also concerned by limitations in the Water Framework Directive classification of chemical status that focuses on a select few ‘priority substances’, and that does not adequately cover many emerging contaminants of concern. But equally, the EA does not consider the several new priority substances and, in some cases, more stringent standards, that the European Union has just brought into law.

Tessa Wardley, Director of Communications & Advocacy for The Rivers Trust, said: "In order to take action to ensure healthy, wild, natural rivers, we need to understand where the problems are. This requires consistent and comprehensive monitoring and transparent sharing of that data, and that includes risk-based monitoring of rivers and waterbodies, with a broad coverage of regular monitoring at all sites. We would like to see the Environment Agency (EA) go further, incorporating citizen science and other sources of data to get a much fuller picture of river health in order to take the necessary action.

"While 82% of individual indicators rated 'good' sounds positive - almost 86% of waterbodies tested still have one indicator that is failing which means there is little chance that the overall health of the waterbody is good - so, we still have a big problem. And the EA testing is not as comprehensive as it needs to be.

"The Rivers Trust Movement works extensively with communities and partners to monitor and restore rivers and catchments, and we share information and monitoring data from many sources through resources like our sewage map and State of Rivers report to help keep everyone informed and to identify where action is needed. We can't do this on our own, and need the EA to keep gathering data, accompanied by strong enforcement and targeted action to boost river health."