The state of Britain’s rivers is incredibly depressing: the water companies dump too much sewage, the farmers dump too much muck, and the regulators are too cowed and underfunded to do their job and stop them.

It wasn’t always this way. As a child I used to swim in the River Wye and I remember the clouds of mayflies in the summer, as well as huge leaping salmon. It was thanks to this wealth of wildlife that the Wye was classified as a special area of conservation along its whole length. Sadly, however, thanks to the failure of the Welsh and British governments to protect the river, much of this abundance is gone, and the Wye’s official status is now “unfavourable – declining”, thanks to pollution from manure and sewage.

This deterioration has not gone unnoticed by the rivers’ visitors: swimmers regularly complain about getting upset stomachs after they venture into the water. My kids still swim in the Wye, but many of their friends’ parents are too concerned about them getting sick to allow them in. It feels as though our river is being taken away from us.

Fortunately, we citizens have a tool we can use to oblige politicians to take notice and force regulators to do their job. By law, the water quality of any stretch of river that is officially designated as having “bathing status” must be checked, and if it’s deemed to be poor, the government must take steps........

© The Guardian