River Stour clean up reveals shocking fly-tipping finds

Trollies, duvets and bicycles were just some of the items found in the river.  Kristin Hawthorne reports.

Transcript

00:00Although Canterbury's river is known for being rich in biodiversity, volunteers weren't

00:08banking on withdrawing £5 from its water.

00:12We've just found an old buried Asda trolley with a £5 note. We find these littered up

00:22and down the Stour. I think it should be the supermarket's responsibility to keep these

00:29trolleys over there and not in here.

00:34This was the amount of litter that was gathered, about 13 bags full. But this was not all that

00:39was found. For instance, there was an eel found trapped in a bottle, a bed frame and

00:44even a bicycle, among many other large items.

00:48If you see, it's like a net and a mesh and lots of animals will get caught in that, so

00:55better out here.

00:57Canterbury City Council charge supermarkets to collect trolleys if they're dumped wherever

01:04they collect them and there's a collection fee, a storage fee and a fee to take them

01:08back to the supermarket. I don't think that fee's been updated and a lot of councils around

01:14England charge more and Canterbury City Council should be charging more.

01:19But it's not just litter and fly-tipping that is a cause of concern for the water.

01:23We think it should be cleaner because you feel that the pollution should be diluted

01:29but actually there's a much bigger load going in. Also quite often sewage releases, raw

01:35sewage into the river after heavy rainfall. We've got the data, there's various sewage

01:41plants along the River Stour and hundreds of hours, last year, hundreds of hours of

01:49raw sewage spillages into the River Stour.

01:53With ideas for new housing developments in the area and the growing threat of climate

01:57change, the future of the river is unpredictable.

02:01Little by little, the impact we're having on our natural environment, on our wildlife,

02:09and we just don't perceive it until we compare it with the baseline from 20, 30, 40 years

02:17ago.

02:18Both humans and animals are affected by the depleting quality of the river, as enjoying

02:23what it has to offer is getting harder and harder. But volunteers say it's never too

02:27late to help out and to put rubbish in the bin.

02:30Kristen Hawthorne, KMTV.