Livestock farming polluted rivers 300 times in one year

Livestock farms successful England polluted rivers 300 times past year, causing 20 large incidents, according to the latest authorities figures.

Yet lone six farms were prosecuted successful 2021, with the Environment Agency giving retired informing letters instead.

The dairy manufacture - mostly acknowledgment to the discarded its millions of cows nutrient - is the worst biology offender, linked to fractional of each workplace pollution.

The authorities said prosecution was a past edifice for persistent offenders.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) said each farmers took their biology responsibilities earnestly and that they were taking "voluntary enactment done industry-led initiatives to thrust improvements that payment the h2o environment".

Much of the biology menace to rivers from farming comes from cattle discarded called slurry - a premix of manure and h2o that farmers store and dispersed arsenic fertiliser.

The slurry produced has to beryllium stored but it tin leak from badly-maintained containers or, if excessively overmuch is applied to the onshore oregon if it rains heavily, it tin tally disconnected from fields.

Serious contamination incidents tin pb to prosecution.

Sue Everett lives adjacent to the stream and took footage of the most caller lawsuit successful 2020.

"The archetypal happening was the odor - it was appalling," she said. "As I approached the river, I could spot that it was black. The adjacent greeting I went retired with my camera and took immoderate videos of the dormant fish."

She fears the nationalist are not alert of the menace posed by workplace slurry to rivers, saying: "I deliberation workplace contamination has been hidden distant for acold excessively long."

But the government, farmers and the dairy manufacture accidental they are each taking steps to tackle slurry contamination successful rivers.

One husbandman that is starring the mode is Kate Hoare, based adjacent Saltash successful Cornwall.

She not lone cautiously manages her slurry but has installed 1 of the UK's archetypal covered slurry lagoons which tin seizure methane for usage to powerfulness her tractor.

She describes slurry arsenic "liquid gold" and says each husbandman knows the worth of keeping it connected the onshore and retired of rivers.

"It helps the soil, and it helps the grass, and it helps the cows to nutrient the beverage that we request to sell," she said.

"So, I deliberation it's astatine the forefront of each dairy farmer's caput - however they tin amended their slurry store and halt it from filling with rainwater and marque the astir of that product.

"Because we're each bully astatine recycling, arsenic you know. It's what we bash arsenic farmers."

To guarantee champion practice, farms are inspected by the Environment Agency. In 2021, 721 inspections were carried retired connected 693 farms.

More than fractional of inspections recovered farmers were breaking the regulations governing slurry storage.

The freshwater food conservation radical Wildfish is presently suing the authorities implicit however it deals with h2o companies pumping sewage successful rivers and seas.

But its main enforcement Nick Measham is arsenic acrophobic astir the menace posed by dairy farming and the slurry it produces.

He said: "Increasingly, we spot crossed the state industrial-scale farming units, peculiarly dairy and beef units. The slurry that they nutrient has to spell somewhere.

"Frequently, farmers really bash presumption the stream arsenic an unfastened sewer. This slurry is truly potent stuff. I mean, it's overmuch much almighty successful presumption of its interaction connected h2o than quality sewage."

"They've accrued the fig of farming inspectors, but until a mates of years ago, the probability of you arsenic a husbandman getting an inspection was astir 1 successful 200 years. So clearly, that is not a large inducement to cleanable your enactment up."

The Environment Agency said it is moving "constructively" with farmers to trim h2o contamination and that it had accrued the fig of inspections to much than 3,000 since January this year.

It added that since April 2021 it has issued astatine slightest 140 informing letters and required 6,169 betterment actions connected farms, with 2,791 completed.

It said its absorption was connected "high-risk locations, antecedently non-compliant businesses, and those farming sectors of top concern".

But it admitted lone six cultivation prosecutions took spot successful 2021/22, saying tribunal enactment was utilized arsenic "a past edifice erstwhile determination is persistent non-compliance".

Defra said it has doubled the backing for its Catchment Sensitive Farming programme, which provides escaped proposal to farmers to assistance them amended negociate manure and soils.

The NFU welcomed the funding, saying that farmers had already made a 75% simplification successful superior contamination incidents year-on-year compared to 2000.

NFU lawman president Tom Bradshaw said: "The NFU volition proceed to enactment with Defra and the Environment Agency done their advice-led attack to infringements, successful bid to efficaciously pass the farming rules for h2o guidance to its members."

Meanwhile, the UK's largest dairy company, Arla, said it is present paying its farmers to enactment successful much environmentally-friendly ways.

A spokeswoman said: "Our husbandman owners are rewarded done their beverage terms for covering slurry stores, utilizing definite slurry spreading techniques and utilizing slurry to marque biogas, a benignant of renewable vigor that tin beryllium utilized to make energy and powerfulness vehicles."