River News

River News from the Environment Agency Waterways Operations Team Leader (Gt. Ouse and Stour Navigations) Paul Separovic

Bridge Boatyard Bridge Road Ely, Cambs CB7 4DY

email info@bridgeboatyard.com Website www.bridgeboatyard.com Telephone 01353 663726

Moorings in marina and on riverside in historic Ely. Close to rail station.

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Nov 2021 to Apr 2022 Waterways Winter Works Programme

Our winter stoppages season traditionally starts from the 1st November every year and runs through to the day before Good Friday in the following year. For this year that equates to winter stoppages running from 1st November 2021 through to and including Thursday 14th April 2022. This doesn’t mean that all affected sites will be closed for this entire duration and some works are able to be undertaken either under a navigation restriction or without impacting navigation at all. The weather at this time of the year and because of the location of works on the river can also often interfere with programmes and cause delays and postponements.

For these reasons if you intend to navigate throughout the winter it is essential to double check firstly the river conditions to ensure it is safe to navigate and to see if there are any planned works , closures, restrictions or advisories that may affect your journey. There are a number of ways to do this;

 Check River Conditions either by calling Floodline on 0345 988 11 88, select option ‘1’ for Flood Warning Information and General Advice for England, then option ‘1’ again for flood warnings in your area and river information for boaters. You can then listen to any existing messages or select option ‘2’ to get messages for another area. Select Option ‘1’ to enter a ‘quick dial code’ and when prompted enter ‘033211’ for the Bedford Ouse from Bedford to St Ives or ‘033212’ for St Ives to Hermitage Lock or visit our Environment Agency website: www.gov.uk/environmentagency

 You can also look up River Advice for Boaters via our TeamUp shared online calendar at; https://teamup.com/ks95856e13ff0fd3b1

 To check for the latest navigation notices on the River Great Ouse for closures, restrictions, advisories and events please see; https:// teamup.com/ks95856e13ff0fd3b1 Or;

News & Views

Do you have an article, comment or photo you would like to share? We would be very pleased to receive it! Contact the editor: carolealderton@waterways.org.uk

 Go to our Anglian Waterways website; https:// www.visitanglianwaterways.org/navigation-notices-great-ouse

Please also note that closure periods are subject to change and additionally Houghton, Hemingford, Cardington and Bedford Lock also have scheduled works planned but the final dates are still to be confirmed. However some are also likely to be in November 2021 so please check before travel.

Pollinator paradise along the River Great Ouse Over the last 18 months the Anglian waterways team have been working hard to create a pollinator paradise along the River Great Ouse and its navigable tributaries. Biodiversity and boaters are benefiting from wildflowers, bird boxes, bee hives, bee hotels and shrubbery which was installed by the Environment Agency along the river. In total the following have been introduced along the river Great Ouse: • 7,000 bulbs • 1,000m2 of wildflower strips (the equivalent of four tennis courts) • 600 metres of native hedging • 120 lavender plants • 60 bird boxes • A bee hive with more than 40,000 bees • 2 large bee hotels. Dick Milthorp, a member of the Waterways Workforce, who has been instrumental to this project, said: “Our work doesn’t end here, we are planning to add more wildflower strips to Eaton Socon landing stage, Godmanchester and Brownshill. We have also got more hedging to plant as well as bluebells, wild garlic and more.” During the autumn the Environment Agency also plans to plant wildflowers across approximately three acres of the Denver Complex. The plants will be a combination of flowers suitable for shady and dry conditions.

Ben’s Bees at Denver Lock Wildflower Seed Mix Summer 2021

Floating Pennywort and Invasive Non-Native Species Update

We’re delighted to be able to inform and update you that the release of the Floating Pennywort weevil, Listronotus elongatus, has received ministerial approval. The Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) is anticipating a shipment of weevils from Argentina which, once they have been disease/parasite checked, will provide the breeding stock for the release population.

We will be working with CABI and the rest of the GB Biocontrol Steering Group to identify release sites. Regrettably, a bid to the Green Recovery Challenge Fund to integrate biocontrol releases with our volunteer-based strategy proved unsuccessful, but we still hope to integrate the biocontrol into a strategic approach to Floating Pennywort management where funding permits. Biocontrol releases require a robust monitoring programme, hence the need for funding.

In 2011 we were instrumental in securing Water Framework Directive (WFD) funding to initiate this research, which was subsequently funded directly from Defra. It is too early to say how effective the weevil will prove in managing floating pennywort, but we hope it will provide an important element to our approach to managing this weed in the future.

It will also compliment efforts and eventually act as another tool in the box for our Floating Pennywort Control Programme for the River Great Ouse and the navigation system. We now have active control programmes fully underway on the Bedford and Ely Ouse Systems and it is thanks to these that you will have seen a large reduction in the amount of Floating Pennywort out on the river this season. In fact, compared to other previous years, there has hardly been any mention of it until just recently.

This is not surprising given that the crescendo of the growth season is around September / October and it is only around then when sightings were really reported. Further follow up surveying, hand picking and larger scale mechanical removal will continue, also combined with spray treatments at effective times of the year. Alongside the introduction of the weevil there is now a better chance than there ever has been of either eradicating or managing this highly invasive waterways menace down to a controlled level that is much less likely to impact navigation and waterways activities and is the culmination of much hard work over many years and with a high amount of investment.

Now that the volume of Floating Pennywort across the system has been managed down we are also now ordering and going to display signage on the river to indicate where the biosecurity quarantine zones are located upon the river; between Hemingford and Hermitage, between Denver and Salters Lode on the Tidal River and on the Great Ouse Relief Channel between the Relief Channel Lock and Downham Market.

Fluctuating River Levels, Issue as a Result and Living Life on the Tilt

This previous season and year has been one in which there has been a lot of changes and many swings. The rivers have been no exception to this and river levels have also been extremely changeable. This has been the case across the whole Great Ouse System, initially over winter we saw some severe flooding which affected not only the navigation but people’s homes, businesses and their livelihoods. Last winter seems a long time ago now, especially staring down the barrel of the approaching winter, but there were some very high levels reached and was probably the worst flooding I’ve seen on the river in my 20 odd years and since the 1998 floods.

This has had long lasting impacts on the river, some of which may last for a while longer yet. One issue caused over the whole river was scouring and subsequent deposition of material, usually downstream of locks and just general debris from the flood water that got strewn all over the navigation and structures and has likely been the cause of some navigation obstructions this season.

In terms of shoaling we had significant amounts at Brandon and cleared the navigation channel at the lock soon afterwards. There is now a fair stretch of water beyond the navigation channel that is very shallow which needs a repeat visit to address. Denver and Salters Lode which are cleared near enough annually and sometimes twice a year now, at Castle Mills, cleared in the spring and Godmanchester also cleared in the spring. In addition there is still further work required at Twenty Pence bends on the Old West, downstream of Hemingford and likely a few other spots. All of which materialised after the high flow and level events on the river. Another effect, especially on the Ely Ouse and lower end of the navigation from Littleport down to Denver has been when the levels were lowered rapidly and deeply to prevent flooding occurring in Ely, Cambridge and surrounding areas. This caused a number of bank slippages which affected many of our lower Ely Ouse visitor moorings.

There have been numerous comments on them this year as for Health and Safety of river users they have had to be closed and fenced off to prevent use and keep people safe. Whilst this is frustrating the fencing is there for your safety so please do not interfere or moor against it and report it to our incident line (0800 80 70 60) if you see any that has been damaged or vandalised. Through the Flooding Recovery Programme, a bit of good news is that the Littleport Station Road mooring is going to get re-piled this winter.

The remainder of the affected moorings are all residing with our Waterways Assets team to organise repairs and whilst we have been getting some good Government Capital Settlements there is a lot of work competing for funding and priority is always given to those assets that allow navigation on the river, such as locks. So those facilities such as moorings that support navigation tend to be lower down the priority list; they are however noted and on the radar but will inevitably take time to resolve. I know this won’t be popular but it is the reality of the current situation.

Elswhere on the Bedford Ouse we have been contending with fluctuating levels from Bedford right down through to Earith. Sometimes this is natural and as a result of either higher than usual amounts of rainfall or not enough of it. On other occasions it’s down to intentional or unintentional activity, such as the testing of sluices or log jams getting under sluices, or power failures or malfunctioning gate controls. More recently we have also had the results of abstraction activity combined with gate control reactivity causing the depletion of levels on certain reaches.

The effects of all this are quite varied but impact especially on those living on the river and those that depend on the river for their business such as marina’s, boat hire businesses etc. For those living aboard it can literally mean living their life on the tilt, even just a small tilt of around 5 degrees can really impinge on your ability to live aboard causing issues when carrying out the simplest of everyday tasks such as making a cup of tea, showering or washing clothes as drainage becomes an issue and everything is not on a

level. For houseboats, service umbilicals can be put under strain and for all boats it can test mooring lines and leave boats bottomed out and stranded. In turn this can cause risks and issues for infrastructure such as utility services and moorings, so the impact is pretty wide spread and challenging.

So too are the causes and variables involved behind the levels going up and down. It is not until these are fully understood and all inputs considered that the issues can be resolved; often this has to be done on a case by case basis and this can vary at the same location at different points throughout the year. Some things it does focus the mind on however are that pressures will only increase into the future. Climate Change will mean greater extremes and challenging conditions will persist and population growth, density and development will all need to utilise the same limited resources to live, work and recreate within.

This all points to taking proactive action now to minimise or reduce the impacts that are being experienced now and could come in the future but this will only be achieved by considering the wider picture and context whilst working in partnership with others, both at an organisational and individual level to achieve results. The scale of issues can be quite daunting but results can be achieved, the momentum and collaboration just needs to keep pace with the changing variables all of the time and in truth it will be the balance that is struck between these that will determine if we can collectively adapt to the changing environment that is inevitably coming / going to come.

Moorings at Littleport closed after slippage

Environment Agency Navigation Charges Review Closes

The Environment Agency has recently finished consulting on a Navigation Charges Review which ran from 22nd June 2021 and closed on the 16th September 2021. We were consulting on a number of things in relation to boat registration:

 a proposed new charging framework to ensure a consistent charge scheme across all our waterways  proposed annual increases in the charges for a 3 year period from 1 January 2022  proposed changes to the requirements for registration of business boats In addition, we wanted your views on some future proposals that included:  online boat registration  boat naming and identification  charging on the River Wye  introduction of a rolling year to our boat registration charges

Overall we had in excess of over 1000 responses to the consultation and a fair proportion of those originated from the Anglian Waterways river users. Whilst it is still too early at present to report back on any detail, the results are now being processed, analysed and worked through. Further communications and stakeholder engagement will follow as a result. However, in the meantime, we wanted to thank all those who took the time to respond and inform us of their views on what proved to be a very emotive subject.

Note:

It is understood that following the consultation process, the EA has taken account of the points raised and will be revising their proposals. Stake holders will be advised of the changes on 2nd December.

Keith Alderton

PRESS RELEASE – THURSDAY 18 NOVEMBER

Water companies could face legal action after investigation launched into sewage treatment works

The Environment Agency (EA) and Ofwat have launched a major investigation into sewage treatment works, after new checks led to water companies admitting that they could be releasing unpermitted sewage discharges into rivers and watercourses.

This investigation will involve more than 2000 sewage treatment works, with any company caught breaching their legal permits facing enforcement action, including fines or prosecutions. Fines can be up to 10% of annual turnover for civil cases, or unlimited in criminal proceedings.

In recent years the EA and Ofwat have been pushing water companies to improve their day-to-day performance and meet progressively higher standards to protect the environment.

As part of this, the EA has been checking that water companies comply with requirements and has asked them to fit new monitors at sewage treatment works. This is to make sure the right levels of wastewater are being treated before overflows are allowed to enter the environment.

Following this action by the EA, several water companies have now revealed that many of their sewage treatment works may not be compliant. This would mean that water companies are in breach of their permits and failing to meet their legal duties.

EA and Ofwat are now looking into all water and sewerage companies to assess the scale of the problem.

Any company caught breaching these minimum standards will face a range of possible enforcement action – up to and including prosecution.