Tonal - Rivers Beyond Sewage

Olly’s job is to find and solve the causes of river pollution. Every misconnected pipe contributes to damage. In a rural area like Somerset, with thousands of small farms and houses with private water, slurry and sewage systems, it’s challenging to stay on top of it all. As we walk around the lanes and fields about a mile upstream of Taunton’s official bathing place he points out some recent problems – a nursing home that had wastewater pipes going straight to the river, a vast dairy farm which leaked slurry, an illegal dump of soil in the river. From wild swimmers to migrating salmon and the invertebrates and gravel they depend upon, the whole ecology can suffer 'death by a thousand cuts'. Love and learn your rivers by subscribing to new episodes :)Visit the website - https://www.tonal-uk.com/Follow Feral Practice - https://www.instagram.com/feralpractice/

Soil scientist and environmentalist Jo says she has her dream job, because working for the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group is where she can make the most difference. If the Environment Agency is the stick, FWAG are the carrot, helping farmers find ways to work with nature as they grow food, and access the funds they need to support the changes.We get granular (pun intended) about soil, farming practices and crops, as we circle and visit the rather sad Hillfarrance Brook - one of the tributaries of the River Tone in ‘poor ecological status’. In this seeming rural idyll problems can be harder to root out, because they are widely dispersed and easily hidden. FWAG’s new project “Upper Tone 360’ hopes to do just that, and so bring health back to the brook, and the river it feeds.

Love Our Ouse made headlines all around the world when their motion to develop a charter of rights for the River Ouse was passed at a Lewes District Council meeting back in 2023. “It was this torrent of interest… globally. I’ve lost track of all the stuff we’ve done, but one that stands out is talking to Al Jazeera about rights of the Sussex Ouse!”Two years and innumerable hours of work later, with the support of a passionate team of collaborators and organisations, international lawyers and local citizens, the Council passed a pioneering charter that enshrines eight rights of the River Ouse. Matthew talks about how it came about, and what needs to happen next to bring these words into practice. The charter is an inspiration and perhaps a blueprint for other communities seeking to celebrate, protect and act for their river.

Peter Reason generously invites us into his (normally solo) ritual visit with the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Frome at Freshford, sharing his mantra and his invocation to the rivers. He speaks movingly about his solitary practice of meeting with rivers as living beings, and the ongoing co-operative enquiry that accompanies it - 'Living Waters'.In the two hours we spent together with the rivers we were talking, but it was at least as much the minutes spent in quiet observation and reflection that made it resonant. Peter talks about how the world speaks in a symbolic register through, for example, creaturely visitations (six kingfishers!). He tells how this work has led him from humanist to animist philosophy.Peter Reason is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bath and previously Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice, and an international leader in the development of participative approaches to inquiry. His work links the tradition of nature writing with the ecological crisis of our times. His books include Spindrift: A wilderness pilgrimage at sea, In Search of Grace: An ecological pilgrimage, and most recently (with artist Sarah Gillespie) On Presence: Essays | Drawings; and On Sentience: Essays | Drawings.

We spent a morning with Matt Wheeldon, Director of Infrastructure Development at Wessex Water, at the Bradford on Tone sewage treatment works. He’s a passionate advocate for change in our sewage system – ‘We’ve got a rainwater problem, not a sewage problem.’ As we got deeper into the topic, it seems we have a politics problem, a development problem, a consumer problem, a carbon footprint problem, a farming problem, a knowledge problem. Lots of problems!As far as actual sewage goes, it isn’t rocket science, but it is expensive, in carbon terms as well as in ££. Follow our trip around the treatment works and our wide ranging conversation about it all.

Vanessa Becker Hughes is the founder of the Somerset Eel Recovery Project. As we walk along the riverbank at the confluence of the Tone and Parrett near Burrow Mump we discuss the mysteries of eels, who begin and end their lives in the Sargasso Sea on the far side of the Atlantic, yet need to find their way back to a stream or waterway near you.Vanessa went eel fishing as a child with her grandfather and now inspires and educates people to help eels (now on the ‘red list’ for species in danger of extinction) and connect to nature through building a relationship with them. SERP’s work includes bringing tanks of glass eels into classrooms and making straw ropes that help young eels climb up the many river barriers that currently cut them off from their homes.