This week, the week of 11th-18th September sees the WI Campaign for Clean Rivers for People and Wildlife.

The WI have always been a campaigning organisation so we are proud to be part of this campaign.

Over the coming week, we will look at why Clean Rivers is such an important issue, especially in our area.

We will also focus on things that we can all do to help bring about change.

Whilst researching into the state of rivers, we have been shocked with what we have learnt!

The first shocking facts that we learnt was:

In 2022:

The Brockenhurst sewer storm overflow spilled 58 times for a total of 482.95 hours , discharging into the Lymington River.

The Boldre sewer storm overflow spilled spilled 26 times for a total of 342.70 hours , discharging into the Lymington River.

The Flexford Lane Sway sewer storm overflow spilled 14 times for a total of 105.00 hours , discharging into the Avon Water.

The Lymington High Street sewer storm overflow spilled 31 times for a total of 48.22 hours , discharging into the Lymington River.

Click here for the source of this data from The Rivers Trust.

Secondly , if this wasn’t shocking enough, on the news last week we learnt that sewage had spilled from a burst pipe into a stream near Lyndhurst which flows into the Beaulieu River in August. You can read about this here.

The New Forest is a Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI), a Special Area of Conservation (SAC), and a Ramsar site as a Wetland of International Importance so it is especially important that we campaign to protect our rivers in this special area that we live in.

There is a display about water pollution and the campaign in the old phone box off Meerut Road in Brockenhurst. (There will be another post about this and how you can get involved)

We are urging all our members and all reading this to do something to bring about change and each day of the campaign, we will be making suggestions of how you can do this.

Today, we are asking you to Raise Awareness of the ‘Clean Rivers’ campaign

So today, we are asking you, lovely reader, to bring awareness to the Clean Rivers Campaign by sharing this article and sharing our social media posts this week.

For those not on social media or for those with a fence in a prominent place, we would be grateful if you could put up a poster on fences, local shops etc. Or we have small posters that could go in you car to raise awareness to the state of our rivers.

We will be giving out posters at our WI meeting.

If you would like a poster to put up, please contact us and we will arrange to get a poster to you.

Look out for more suggestions in the coming days.

Thank you.