Phosphates: Too Much of a Good Thing?

 I went to St Mary's to watch the film about phosphates the other night.  About 20 or so people were there.  

The people who made the film had originally made a film about COP26, the climate summit in Glasgow, and on the strength of this West Country Voices in Somerset asked them to make a film about their main environmental concern - the build up of phosphates in the Somerset Levels.

They did a lot of investigation.  They visited a sewage treatment works in Wincanton, which is now removing phosphates from the water - previously the phosphates just went straight through to the river.  There was an organic farm that produces biogas - they use the waste products from livestock, and also buy in stuff like scrap bread from supermarkets.  Apparently 50% of bread in this country goes to waste, which is a whole other problem in itself.

They talked about the back up in the planning system, since applications have to show that they can deal with the extra phosphates from human waste when they are building new houses.

And they had some good footage of Our Lady of the Wye being paddled down the river on the pilgrimage that Father Richard organised.

The question and answer session after the film was very interesting too - there were several people in the room who knew a lot about the subject.  One chap said that the discharge of phosphates into the Wye used to be about 50/50 from sewage and agriculture.  Now all the sewage plants along the Wye have phosphate strippers, so the balance has gone to 17% sewage and 83% agriculture, but the total level of phosphates has risen because of people like Cargill not dealing with their waste products.

The point was also made that phosphates are a valuable resource that is being wasted by being washed into the rivers and out to sea.  There are places where more phosphates are needed to grow crops - and the stuff being wasted, and polluting the rivers, could have a use in agriculture instead.

Meanwhile in government, a few years ago, a rule was made that there had to be a balance of nutrients going into farms compared to the output of the farms, so the farmers didn't use more than was needed to grow the crop.  However, Therese Coffey, the government minister in charge at the time, decided that this would place an unfair burden on farmers, so the Environment Agency didn't have to enforce it.

Someone said that it would be a very good thing if people started writing to their MPs to get that ruling enforced.

So there are lots of solutions to the problem, if the will is there to make the investments, and to enforce the regulations that already exist.