The bad one
Well-known member
Last week I had cause to phone the EA over a slight pollution incident in my local park. The background to this is thus: I'd gone in birdwatching as I do most days, it's a large park with quite diverse habitats, therefore we get lots of birds in it, some quite locally rare. In one of the Dells (small mature wooded valley) there's a stream in it. The stream appears on old maps (100 year old) but doesn't have a name, and drained the surrounding fields from the time before they were built on with housing.
To accommodate the sewer drainage for the housing development that was built (1960s) the then utility company put a main sewer pipe in from it under the stream. I can only come to the conclusion that the stream must have been dry when the surveyors looked at it and drew up the plans. Thereby deciding that was the most direct route to take to the down hill the sewerage works about a mile away. Why else would you put in a main sewer pipe under a stream?
Anyway on the day I noticed the stream was discoloured about halfway down it. So down the embankment I went to investigate what was causing it and was met with the pungent sewage smell. This little stream meets another slightly large stream that runs into two small reservoirs that are owned by a Dead Man's Shoes Angling Club, which I'm not a member of. I followed the pollution to it's source up stream to a manhole cover, which had lifted slightly in the heavy rains we have had all winter up here.
I rang the pollution hotline for the EA, and thanks to the beauty of the Smart Phone GPS I could give them a precise grid reference to within 5 metres of the source.
It's a point worth bearing in mind for several reasons as anglers, not least reporting incidents and/or if you have an accident whilst out fishing and you need the emergency services.
With in an hour I had a call back from an IPC officer who was on site looking at the pollution and just about to get United Utilities out to fix the problem, which was done within 8 hours of me reporting it.
So as the title says, credit where credits due!
To accommodate the sewer drainage for the housing development that was built (1960s) the then utility company put a main sewer pipe in from it under the stream. I can only come to the conclusion that the stream must have been dry when the surveyors looked at it and drew up the plans. Thereby deciding that was the most direct route to take to the down hill the sewerage works about a mile away. Why else would you put in a main sewer pipe under a stream?
Anyway on the day I noticed the stream was discoloured about halfway down it. So down the embankment I went to investigate what was causing it and was met with the pungent sewage smell. This little stream meets another slightly large stream that runs into two small reservoirs that are owned by a Dead Man's Shoes Angling Club, which I'm not a member of. I followed the pollution to it's source up stream to a manhole cover, which had lifted slightly in the heavy rains we have had all winter up here.
I rang the pollution hotline for the EA, and thanks to the beauty of the Smart Phone GPS I could give them a precise grid reference to within 5 metres of the source.
It's a point worth bearing in mind for several reasons as anglers, not least reporting incidents and/or if you have an accident whilst out fishing and you need the emergency services.
With in an hour I had a call back from an IPC officer who was on site looking at the pollution and just about to get United Utilities out to fix the problem, which was done within 8 hours of me reporting it.
So as the title says, credit where credits due!
Last edited:
