Clean Mersey

13/10/2026

https://theriverstrust.org/state-of-our-rivers?utm_source=The+Rivers+Trust+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=e6758aa3b3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_07_23_08_17_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-295fe7355b-211336702&mc_cid=e6758aa3b3&mc_eid=c916aa1f49

The Rivers Trust are con­ser­va­tion experts with a wealth of data and exper­tise at our fin­ger­tips. We work with our mem­ber Trusts to make our shared…

06/10/2026

Environment Agency Get the permit reviewed! Its unacceptable for thousands of litres of oil to spill into the Mersey estuary or groundwater regardless that the impact of individual and cumulative incidents were unable to be measured. While we welcome the prosecution the years of delay are just appalling for nature. Get this fixed.

Pollution was spilled into local rivers and protected sites, documents shared with the BBC suggest.

01/10/2026

Please share to non-swimming beach-user friends if you agree no beach should be excluded from monitoring of water quality on the basis it's not used by swimmers (bathers). Kids paddling, SUPPERS, kayakers, dinghy sailors, jet skiers, surfers, people splashing around cooling their legs are all legitimate beach-users who need to know if the beach is clean. Supporting

Recreational Data HQ Updated by Kirsty Davies Where do you swim, surf, paddle or play? Are you a 'bather'? no, we thought not. In the legislation that

30/09/2026

Yesterday at Newton Brook - 4 young giant pond snails seen here hitching a ride and apparently healthy ..despite ammonia topping the scale at 6.0ppm in the brook. . Hurrah for pollution tolerant life

Other invertebrates included medium to small hoglice - no adults (wondering what happened to the big ones we've seen on previous visits - looks like maybe there was a wipe out and the population have regenerated although it could have been due to the deluges not necessarily pollution) and a plethora of worms and leeches.

We report to the EA whenever we see pollution, which anyone can do - see link below..if we put a stop to misconnected domestic drains, educate folk, we would see some species that are less pollution tollerant making a come back. 🤩.

29/09/2026

Useful!!

13/09/2026

Clean Mersey annual report with data summaries for each waterbody within the Birket Catchment for 2025

Blue dots on graphs are our test results. They need to be BELOW the red dots if the river is to achieve GOOD ecological status. Sometimes they were, but not often enough.

03/09/2026

Every metre of every river is worth fighting for - reports of water pollution to the Environment Agency play a part in saving food webs. Anyone can dial the hotline or report using the online form on their phone. It seems like nothing ever happens but you WILL help decisions on where to target funding. https://www.gov.uk/report-water-pollution

30/08/2026

Counting invertebrates in August! This time last year we didn't have enough water to get over the lip of our nets...some of the headwater streams of the Birket catchment dried up entirely.. Today, even the Newton Brook was flowing. Whoop! We upload our results to the Riverfly Partnership, a national database accessible to all agencies wanting to check on the health of the Birket catchment.
Phosphate was 300 today and hardly with leaf litter (it had been flushed through by the recent deluges) . We were delighted to find a couple of Gammarus for the first time since we've been monitoring this stream..

30/08/2026

All go this weekend! Invertebrate monitoring at Arrowe Park. We found dead gamarrus and hog lice floating among live ones. Only around 10 of each species, including live and dead. Never seen that before. Various sizes and bodies undamaged. . Some others were sluggish... Phosphate reading 1000. Ammonia 0.0
The phosphate reading is too high for them to survive. All the live Gammarus I found were hiding in the crevices of one pock marked rock.
We walked up stream to take a reading at the big surface water outfall from the hospital. Discharge was a bit foamy but phosphate dropped to 500 in the pool created by the outfall discharge so the discharge was having the effect of diluting the stream (improving water quality). Hmm.

No United Utilities assets upstream. Just a ditch running off the fields, 2 weirs and a 40 foot high dam holding back a large shallow silted up ornamental pond.
We decided to skip the ditch (potential for agricultural run off) and walk up to the dam. And there we found a newly formed 30-40m long shallow stagnant pond held back by a small weir a short distance from the dam. Massive quantity of dead leaves now decaying underwater where before there was a little stream. Phosphate 1000. Annoxic . Organic foam. Polluting downstream from it..
These weirs in Arrowe Park really could do with knocking out. We simply don't have the amount of flow we used to have through the Park. Too much rain water is going into the combined sewers. Its frustrating to see the impact the weir is having on this low flow river. We have reported the high phosphate level from the high dam/weir pool as a pollution incident as its killing life downstream as far as the car park.We will be monitoring this situation...

To cheer ourselves up we managed to clear the chute at the side of another weir down stream of our invertebrate monitoring site. It had got blocked so we pulled out all the leaves and sticks and whoosh! It started draining. 🤩👍. the cohesive force of water and reduced pooling by the lower weir will have a small pull on the upstream water in the annoxic pool at the weir upstream. Something positive.

18/08/2026

Big meeting coming up to see what can be done about contaminated surface water (pollution not from UU). A boards are ready so we can give people a guided tour of the Birket catchment pollution hotspots..