“River health is a wicked problem”

The current issue of Delayed Gratification looks back at January to March 2026, and includes an interview with Mark Lloyd, the CEO of The Rivers Trust. If you have access, it’s “Troubled waters” (DG#62, p. 102).A couple of things happened back then. News arrived from the Environment Agency that 2025 had seen 1.9 million hours of sewage spills. And Channel 4 broadcast Dirty Business, which you will have watched.The focus there is on the sewage—rightly, as it’s grim. But as with many things, it turns out to be a bit more complicated than that.Here’s what I took from reading the article.SystemsCombined sewage and rainwater was a mistake (thank you, The Victorians). If we can’t start again, storage tanks are used, but they are not the solution:I’ve been to see one of these things; they’re about the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools and can fill up in 15 minutes when there’s heavy rain. The better thing you can do is to remove surface water at source, with soakaway areas full of trees and…

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