Find out the problem

If you’ve been on the River Rescue Kit’s page on agricultural pollution, you’ll know that 62% of river stretches fail ecological health standards due to poor agricultural practices(1). A basic summary is: the majority of agricultural pollution comes from farm animal muck being spread on fields when and where it shouldn’t be, and then leeching into our rivers. The ultimate source of this waste is usually intensive factory farms that produce a huge amount of waste. You can watch a video about this issue on the Wye, where intensive poultry units (IPUs) are a massive problem killing the Wye. There are just too many factory farms along one river. 

This is also true on the Severn. Even though the Severn is already buckling under the weight of the factory farms already there, councils keep approving yet more. But why when the problem is so clear? Currently councils only consider what’s going on in the land of the application.

It would be like if you were making a cake, you’ve put two eggs into the bowl and your eldest child comes in and says they’d like to add two eggs. You say yes; two eggs for a cake seems reasonable. Your youngest child then asks if they can add two eggs. You’ve said yes to a similar request, so you say yes again. Your middle child then asks… You see where I’m going with this. By only considering each request, and not what’s already in the bowl you’ve ended up with an eggy mess rather than a cake and a very angry family who won’t choose to put you in charge of cakes again. 

So we’re arguing that there should be no new industrial poultry units while the river catchment’s over-capacity with the waste products from these farms. When considering waste in planning commissions it can’t be ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ 

So when local Severn campaigner and River Action Advisory Board member Dr Alison Caffyn let us know Shropshire Council had approved yet another application for an IPU, we identified this as an important opportunity to bring legal action to highlight failures to comply with the law and assess environmental impact (and lack of common sense).

Take Legal Action

We needed to learn about the planning application, so used our ‘Right to know’ to get information about the application, what environmental considerations were or were not made. We then got legal advice from environmental lawyers. You can read more about the legal side of this action in more detail in the wonderful blog by our Head of Legal. 

We used the Aarhus Convention to limit our legal costs, but instructing a legal team to bring litigation costs money, so, like us, you will likely need to fundraise. You can learn lots of great tips for fundraising on the Raise Funds page of the River Rescue Kit.

If we manage to set a legal precedent that makes new law. But if other councils don’t hear about that change, they could ignore the ruling and we’d have to keep taking councils to court – which would not be a good use of anyone’s time or money. So we wanted to raise awareness about this case so planning teams in councils everywhere would hear about this case and raise the bar when making planning decisions. We needed to…

Get Media Interest

Our page has on getting media interest has lots of tips like:

Identify key themes – There’s too many chickens. To get this message across we wanted pictures of lots of people dressed as chickens to drive this message home. Did we spend an evening as a team making lots of chicken masks out of paper? You bet we did!

Reach out to traditional media coverage – Good Morning Britain and BBC News were interested and sent news crews. We sent press releases to print media which were picked up by national and regional news: The Guardian, BBC News, The ENDS Report, Shropshire Star, Farming UK, Border Counties Advertizer Online, Landmark Chambers. 

Use high-quality visuals – You can’t achieve the interest above without good visuals. That required a lot of people (see “Calling on your communities” below), who we got to all wear striking red and yellow to match the ‘too many chickens’ theme. Indomitable campaigner Vey Straker attended as Lady Wye, blessing the waters of the Severn and the legal team, whilst the master of spectacle Arts Activist Kim Kaos brought the awe-inspiring 10-foot Goddess of the Severn. Banners and placards were made. XR Rhythms brought drums, bringing energy to every photo and video. We made sure we had a photographer/videographer Adam Hamish Haggerty on hand to catch all the action. It’s worth noting that even for a short and relatively small event, this took alot of work.

Social Media – We prepared social media posts and blogs ready to go as soon as the event finished, as another way to get the word out there and make more noise.

Calling on your communities

You always have allies! Whilst planning your campaign, build your network. Whether that’s members of your own group, friends and family, local businesses, other groups who use the river, or are interested in the environment. There may be local Rivers Trust groups, Wildlife Trust groups, XR groups, or other river campaigning groups like yours who would happily join you in solidarity. When we amplify each others’ voices we can achieve great things. 

Use email, use phone, use private messages over social media. We created a digital flyer that explained what the event was, why it was important, and all the details. We then asked our network to share it with their networks via WhatsApp, which was really effective. 

On the day we had allies join us from : 

Sustain

Friends of the River Wye

Save the Wye

Ludlow Water Sampling Group

Talybont Environment Action

Radnorshire Wildlife Trust

XR Caerdydd

XR Rhythms

And lots of others who believed in our cause, joined their friends, or who just stopped to see what was going on and wanted to show their support.

This network can also help sharing your social media, your photos etc, before and after your event. 

You can find more information on organising a demonstration in the River Rescue Kit Campaign Resources. 

Closing words

Time will tell if we’re successful with this case, by stopping the expansion of this Shropshire IPU, setting a legal precedent, and making people aware of that precedent. However this isn’t the only outcome. We developed our community connections, we raised awareness of agricultural pollution and strengthened ties with the media. All of which will be just as important for our campaigning going forward.

I hope this is a useful example of how you can use the River Rescue Kit to campaign for our rivers. 

It can feel like an uphill battle at times, but in the words of a very wise animated fish: “Just keep swimming”