Water Quality Classification

You may have seen that bathing water results have just been published for all sites around the country, including our 4 new bathing water sites on the Dart for the first time.

As we expected, the water quality at Totnes was classified as poor, which has been the subject of headlines, but it is just as important to note that the other locations down river met the standards that the EA has set, with Dittisham being classified as Good, Warfleet Creek being classified as Excellent, and Stoke Gabriel being classified as Sufficient.

This means that for the first time ever we can give good advice about where we can recommend you swim, based on proper scientific testing, and when swimming on the lower reaches of the Dart, you can be confident that the water meets national standards.

Of course, we are unhappy that the water quality at Totnes is not up to standard, but even when we worked with our colleagues at Friends of the Dart to set up these four bathing water sites we expected Totnes to fail.  What this means is not only can you be informed before deciding whether to take a dip, but also that a lot more focus will be put on identifying causes of pollution and cleaning them up.  As the EA said “of the 27 new bathing water sites designated this year (nationally), 18 of which are classified as ‘poor’. This is not unexpected, as the new sites have not been managed for bathing before, and it takes time to understand and tackle the sources of pollution affecting them.”

The Dart is almost certainly now the most monitored estuary of its size in the country – not only is there the official EA testing, but we have also helped sponsor Friends of the Dart to do year round testing, and with partners we are trialling an unmanned vessel to monitor in multiple locations – it is currently testing the waters between Bow Creek and Blackness, to help see whether there are spikes in water quality in certain areas.  All of this scientific data will be invaluable to help fix the problem.

We are taking our part in fixing the issues too.  Our work on the saltmarshes has many benefits, one of which is that these habitats are natural filters of all kinds of pollutants.  Our new mooring policy will also help reduce pollution.  There is rightly a lot of focus on water companies to clean up their acts, but to clean up the river we all need to work together – every wet-wipe flushed down the toilet, every garden paved over, every bit of dog mess left behind makes a real difference to the health of our estuary.  You can also help beef up the testing regime by completing this survey, which will hopefully lead to year-round official testing amongst other needed improvements.

There is now much more data than ever before.  South West Water now have real time data for all of their outfalls in the river, and we have correlated much of the data on our website.  It is very easy to get scared by the data – whilst we can now see the issues, they are not new – it is important to remember that the river is probably cleaner now than it has been for decades, as there has been massive investment in the areas sewage treatment, but like you, we are pushing for more.  Please use this data well to decide when and where to swim, but don’t let it stop you enjoying the beautiful Dart.