On 10th October 2024, three RMRW trustees, Caroline, Nigel and Sue, attended the annual River Mole & Wey Catchment Partnship event, this year it was held at West Horsley Place. It is very useful get together every year to find out what the other groups have been doing, their plans, make new contacts and meet up with representatives and volunteers to share expereinces. Zoe Channon, Surrey Wildlife Trust, introduced the day. The keynote speaker Andy Thomas from the Wildife Trout Trust, told us about how he was inspired from a young age to love rivers and fishing when he was given an illustrated book called 'Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing'! He grew up near the River Wey but also walked the River Mole and carried out the first fish surveys in the 1980s.
Nigel Bond, trustee RMRW, explained the results from the last year of testing by our citizen scientists, for Phosphate, Ammonia, Conductivity, Temperature and Nitrate for SES Water. We test numerous tributaries upstream from Sewage Treatment Works which are vital to supply fish and invertebrates to the main river in the event of pollution. Nigel expained how the Leigh Brook is 'ecologically dead' due to the very high chemical discharges from the Sewage Treatment Works. He ended by saying the point of what we are doing is to provide the data and analysis to campaign for government ACTION to put in place tighter legal limits and targets, on sewage discharge, and to push for ACTION from Thames Water, landowners and all of us to clean up the pollution which is killing our rivers.
Download Nigel's PPT here:
Other speakers included:
Looking Back - updates from 2023/24
Nigel Bond, River Mole River Watch, water quality in the River Mole.
Alistair Young, River Wey Trust, water quality in the River Wey
Libby Ralph, Farnham Biodiversity Partnership.
Looking Forward - future plans
Adam Brown, Surrey Local Nature Recovery Strategy who talked about the biodiversity mapping project for Surrey.
Josh Hammond, Surrey Wildife Trust, phase 3 of the Rye Brook project.
Mattie Yeta, CGI Chief Strategic Officer, SEEDS water quality project.
Lewis Cambell, South East River Trust, mending the Upper Mole.
Sam Velente, National Trust, water vole recovery.
Natural Flood Management (NFM)
Ben Tonkin, Environement Agency, Pipp Brook NFM.
Ben Hapgood, Surrey Widlife Trust, National Environment Invetment Readiness Fund. (NEIRF 3) in the Wey.
Josh Hammond, Surrey Wildlife Trust, Cranleigh Waters.
Matt Link, West Horsely Place, NFM at West Horsely Place.
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