Did you know the River Mole in Surrey has relatively poor water quality and ecological quality? Rivers and streams are the life blood for our local environment and they drive biodiversity:-
0 sections of the river Mole have ‘good’ ecological quality status. No rivers in UK have ‘good’ status. Many in Europe do have ‘good’ status.
14 sections of the river Mole have ‘moderate‘ ecological quality status.
7 sections of the river Mole have ‘poor’ ecological quality status.
1 section of the river Mole has ‘bad‘ ecological quality status.
The Rivers Trust provides great information about the status of our rivers and what we need to do. See: click here
There are 10 sewage treatment works (STW) along the river Mole in Surrey. Here are how many raw sewage discharge events there were in the year 2020 and how many hours raw, untreated human sewage was spilling into the river:
Crawley STW: 41 discharge events; lasting 506 hours
Charlwood STW: 32 discharge events; lasting 321 hours
Horley STW: 69 discharge events; lasting 1266 hours
Burstow STW: 124 discharge events; lasting 1279 hours
Reigate STW: 114 discharge events; lasting 1854 hours
Holmwood STW: 102 discharge events; lasting 1591 hours
Dorking STW: 118 discharge events; lasting 2902 hours (SADLY THE WINNER !)
Leatherhead STW: 76 discharge events; lasting 1108 hours
Cobham STW: 35 discharge events; lasting 335 hours
Weybridge STW: 51 discharge events; lasting 524 hours
TOTAL: 806 discharge events in one year; over 12,000 hours of raw sewage discharge
How disgusted do you feel by those figures? In addition, there are over 100 other discharge points along the river, mostly from farms. If their slurry and waste tanks are discharged these can have a serious impact on the water quality of the river. There are also 13 sewage pumping stations which can overflow and discharge raw sewage into streams and rivers. There are around 8 storm overflows which discharge raw sewage into rivers during stormy conditions (albeit that under such circumstances the discharge is highly diluted).
What can you do?
We can object to our rivers being used as dumping grounds. And require them to be restored to bathing water standard.
Write to and tweet to Thames Water, asking what they plan to do about the water quality of the river Mole and the discharges of raw sewage into it.
Write to and tweet to the water regulator Ofwat, asking what they plan to do to make Thames Water accountable for their pollution of our river.
Write to and tweet to the environment regulator EA, asking what they plan to do about the river Mole water quality and discharges of raw sewage and farm effluent discharges.