Affinity Water has released two podcasts explaining how Citizen Science projects and Real-Time Monitoring are being used to help improve the health of the region’s chalk streams.

In a new podcast Affinity Water talks to Professor Kate Heppell, from Queen Mary University of London, who has been seconded for a year to work with the Chilterns Chalk Streams Project to monitor the health of precious chalk streams in the Chilterns AONB.

Standing by the River Chess at Restore Hope Latimer, Professor Heppell, explains why studying the pressures on chalk systems and rivers is important and how local people, through Citizen Science and volunteer programmes, and the use of sensors and real-time data can help to tackle water quality issues in rivers.

In the first podcast, Prof Heppell says that nationally there are four big challenges associated with the health of chalk streams:

• physical modifications which can impact the flows;
• agricultural pollution in rural areas;
• sewage and wastewater treatment issues;
• urban diffuse pollution with run off from roads and towns as well.

Affinity Water region known to have one of the highest water uses in UK

She explains that turning concern about river health into action is key and that local authorities and highways agencies, conservation bodies, and local landowners, farmers and NGOs involved in the wider catchment activities need to work together to bring about change, as well as the water only and sewage companies themselves and householders who use water.

Affinity Water’s Save Our Streams campaign has so far achieved over 170,000 sign ups and saved 5 million litres of water every day. The region is known to have one of the highest water uses in the UK and to be the home of 10 per cent of the world’s chalk streams, approximately 24 in all.

In 2020 Affinity Water announced its commitment to end unsustainable abstraction from these precious rivers, which was followed by voluntary action to stop abstraction from two sources in the Chess Valley.

Affinity Water and Thames Water have also recently worked with Arup to develop ‘chalk stream health metrics’, a set of indicators to provide a health baseline and help identify more actions for improving ecosystem services within the catchment, such as water quality, recreation or climate regulation.

Professor Heppell has been seconded to the Chiltern Chalk Streams Project for a year to help identify the baseline water quality of the river Chess through a five-year project that involves water companies, Local Authorities, local landowners and NGOs.

Professor Heppel: "Citizens’ Science projects will play a key role in the future" 

According to Professor Heppel, Citizens’ Science projects will play a key role in the future and she is urging the public to get involved:

“These rivers are classified as being over-abstracted which has led to low flow issues. We have to consider flows in the long term and how they will change due to population growth and climate change. We have multiple complex problems that are going to impact these rivers in the future, so we do all need to work together in partnership, including the public and citizen science initiatives which help to monitor the quality of water in the river.”

"We should be using more of these sensors networked together to look at river health"

In a discussion with Paul Jennings, Chair of the River Chess Association in the second podcast, Professor Heppell explains how for the past two years a water quality sensor in the river has helped to monitor the quality of the water every fifteen minutes and that data can be sent to her mobile phone:

“These sensors can be connected to your computer or iPad so that you can see what the water quality is doing in real time as well. In the future we should be using more of these sensors networked together to look at river health and water quality to be able to then create predictive models of what is happening in response to climate change and population change in our catchments.”

River Chess Association Chair: "without data we can't move forward"

Paul Jennings, Chair of the River Chess Association is also a supporter of improved river monitoring. He said:

“The sensor data, is helping us to provide a really clear picture of how the river health is moving. In the past we gathered data perhaps once a month, or at other time when incidents happened but that may have been too late, this data gives us a consistent record over a period of time. The equipment has become more sophisticated and more robust. This is one of four sites we have on the River Chess, and we are looking to supplement this.

“Citizens Science programmes are assisting with these; they can work on helping to keep them clean and gather other data such as on riverflies. I am optimistic because the general public has got behind this, ten years ago very little was known about it, now people are more aware and are telling the politicians that using rivers for sewer discharges is unacceptable.

“Kate’s involvement is hugely important to us. We have someone who is an expert and can set up water quality monitoring systems. We are establishing procedures and putting in place the right equipment and right teams of people to get accurate data and without that data we can’t move forward.“

 Click here to listen to Part One: River Health Podcast: Part One - Professor Kate Heppell

Click here to listen to River Health Podcast: Part Two Professor Heppell in conversation with Paul Jennings, Chair of the River Chess Association