Are you sure about that? rivers may look a lot cleaner, what quantity of endocrine disrupters are in our rivers? they can be filtered out but guess what the water companies don't and the EA don't force them to. How do you know what polutents are discharged into rivers when the EA don't know?
That much learning has taken place that they think that dredging rivers on the somerset levels is the way to control floods even though they have been told by experts that its not the way to go, floods that have happened for hundreds of years in that area, learnt so much that they voiced the idea of allowing farmers/landowners to dredge rivers themselves without any supervision.
I have no doubt that a properly funded fully manned angling department that is not the whipping boy of other depts. within the EA would be wonderful, unfortunately what we have is a small part of a massive government quango that is underfunded, under manned and top heavy with management that couldn't care less about angling being to busy looking after their own slice of an ever dwindling cake.
The government will never be able to get rid of the EA completely, the EU wont allow them to, what they can do is what they do now, promise and sign up to targets they have no intention of meeting. Your comment about prosecuting it (the EA?) I don't understand at all. Its the EA that should be prosecuting offenders, figures prove they fail massively in that area as well.
In answer to your last question, yes I have they are called river trusts.
I doubt any river will ever be pure H2O, there will always be new pollutants discovered with better detection methods, new pollutants produced by industrial companies and new ones created in the environment. I doubt anyone could be aware of them all - all of the time. As long as we try to keep on top of them. And I dare say the EA try and fail on occasions.
The somerset levels-last program I saw they were raising the roads by 8ft and building barriers. There were many suggestions aired about the best way to stop floods last year, I don't know what the best ones were, but at least some are being tried. Suggesting farmers do it themselves unsupervised was probably not the best idea from the EA.
I am not against the idea of a angling dept within the EA but, it could not be separated from other environmental issues, many are linked to angling in some way. Soil erosion, wind farms, bio diversity, drinking water, climate change etc. Every organization is over manned by management, people always gravitate to these jobs and nice comfortable administrative jobs. However, it does not mean they are not necessary. And they do have people in the field doing the dirty work. But, I agree, a better proportional level would be better. I don't agree they don't care about angling- I have found them helpful, concerned and willing to listen on angling issues, as far as dealing with any Gov bureaucratic organization can be. In fact they are better than some, I have just have to deal with my local town hall on something completely different and it was a total nightmare. By the by. I would say the EA are aware of their remit, what there job is for and mostly try as hard as they can to fulfill that role within the restraints imposed on them.
I imagine the Gov could get rid of any department it wants to and we may not be in the EU one day. (I m could be wrong on both counts). Promising to meet targets; sometime they do sometimes they don't. they have got a lot nearer meeting EU clean sea water targets, clean air targets etc. But, yes, they do fail sometimes but, I wouldn't say massively. I have seen massive improvements in my lifetime on many things and in somepart due to the EA, Eu targets.
My point about prosecuting the EA- is the EA the most prosecuted Gov Dept, ditto the most costly to the Gov, and the least popular by the people its trying to help? Would they look to get rid of such a dept over others? Who knows, I don't but, it seems we could be cutting of our noses---
River trusts, they seemed to work well once upon a time, I do not know much about them. We are where we are and I think I would rather make the best of what we have instead of wholesale change, take too long, too costly and prone to long periods of errors with no guarantee it would make things better.
I doubt you will find any good points in any thing much. I myself have frequently done the same over the last few years But, at some point you have to also look at the good points and weigh up the pros and cons to make a balanced judgement and decide to support or not.
mg:
