The River Wye is at the centre of what lawyers are billing as the biggest environmental pollution case brought in the UK.
One of the country’s largest chicken producers and a water company appeared in the High Court on Monday, accused of polluting the Welsh river. It’s claimed that sewage spills and the spreading of chicken manure on farmers’ fields as fertiliser are responsible for the green algae choking the waterway.
More than 4,500 locals are taking part in the “landmark case” against Avara Foods and Welsh Water, said the BBC. Both companies deny responsibility, calling the claims “misconceived” and “misguided”. Leigh Day, the law firm bringing the action, said the court action is the “last avenue for justice”.
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What has happened to the River Wye?
The Wye “used to be full of wild salmon”, said climate lawyer Chris Hilson on The Conversation. “Today it is full of algae.”
In 2020, conservation groups noticed the “once crystal-clear waters” had turned into a “pea soup”, said The Observer. They suspected chicken manure from local poultry farms was “sullying the water”.
The “tens of millions” of chickens in the area, thought to be about a quarter of the UK’s entire poultry population, create a “manure mountain” of “hundreds of thousands of tonnes”, said The Times. Until recently, manure from the Wye’s chicken sheds was spread as fertiliser on nearby arable fields. The legal claim alleges that, during periods of rain, nitrogen and phosphorus in the manure washed off the soil into waterways where, combined with sewage spills, it caused algae growth, robbing the water of oxygen and suffocating fish.
What’s the aim of the lawsuit?
Many of the chicken farms in the Wye area supply a Hereford processing plant belonging to poultry provider Avara Foods. Although it was arable farmers who spread the manure, the locals bringing the suit believe Avara and its subsidiary, Freemans of Newent Ltd, should be held responsible for the river pollution, and are seeking “substantial damages”.
The suit also names Welsh Water, claiming the Wye was polluted by its sewage spills and by its “sludge”, a by-product of sewage treatment, also being spread on farmers’ fields as fertilisers.
The group bringing the claim is also demanding action to clean up the river. This isn’t “what this river should look like and feel like and smell like”, Justine Evans, lead claimant and wildlife filmmaker, told the BBC. “There’s been systemic failure going on” and we need to “make polluters pay”.
What’s the defence?
Avara Foods claims its operations aren’t causing the pollution. It told its poultry suppliers in 2023 to stop spreading manure on their land, after the Environment Agency downgraded the Wye‘s health status to “unfavourable/declining”. It can’t be held responsible, it says, for arable farmers using chicken manure as crop fertiliser.
“We believe that this legal claim is based on a misunderstanding, as no manure is stored or spread on poultry-only farms that supply Avara Foods,” the company said. “Individual farmers are responsible for how nutrients are used in their arable operations. Avara is not involved in any arable operations and has no control over this activity.”
Welsh Water said it had invested £70 million over the past five years to improve its infrastructure on the Wye, and had reached “real improvements in water quality”. It intends “to defend this case robustly”.
What is the significance of the case?
Legal action against river polluters isn’t new but “there has never been a UK case with this many claimants”, said Hilson on The Conversation. “A large range of people suing can add legitimacy to a court case, making it harder to ignore.” It’s also a “strategic” lawsuit: not just about getting compensation but also about drawing attention “to the plight of some of the UK’s most cherished waterways” and securing “policy change to clear them up”.
The case now unfolding in court is “as much a detective story involving determined amateur sleuths and citizen scientists as a conventional legal battle”, said The Observer. And, at its heart, lies the question: “who almost killed the river Wye?”