River Roding in Parliament for the first time Yesterday I took a guest of honour into the Houses of Parliament for a historical first visit. I was able to smuggle this guest in my bag, but it’s arguably more important than any politician who currently works there. This guest was the River Roding. A bottle of Roding water was on the desk in front of me as I was given the chance by Ilford MP Jas Athwal to question Thames Water & the Environment Agency about illegal sewage dumping in the Roding for the first time ever. The facts are damning. Throughout last year I went out on the Roding in a pair of waders with a bucket & ammonia tester & discovered dozens of completely illegal outfalls spewing over a billion lites a year of raw sewage straight into the Roding. In the last 30 years, Thames Water has effectively stolen £10’s of millions of bill payers money that should have been spent on infrastructure upgrades on the Roding, gave the money to shareholders, & then spent almost nothing on the river, safe in the knowledge that no one was likely to call out the tide of illegal sewage that resulted. Up til now, they weren’t wrong: the Environment Agency has not brought a single prosecution for illegal sewage dumping on the Roding since the Agency was founded, despite thousands of crimes being committed. That cosy consensus had now ended. Before I questioned the EA & Thames Water, I made clear that I wasn’t there just on my own, or for the River Roding Trust, but representing the thousands of people who live the Roding & are determined that illegal sewage dumping will stop. I thought my asks to Thames Water were entirely reasonable in the circumstances: they must by the end of this year provide a detailed, costed plan of the specific physical steps they will take to end all illegal sewage dumps on the Roding by 2030. My ask to the EA was also reasonable: that they must prosecute all illegal sewage spills on the Roding to the full extent of the law, but that they could accept enforcement undertaking that the fines for each offence be spent on fixing the outfalls, rather than going to government. I’m sorry to say that neither Thames Water or the Environment Agency was able to say yes to either of these fair & reasonable demands. It therefore appears that Thames Water’s plan is to keep saying good sounding words, but to keep dumping sewage in the Roding for decades. The EA’s plan is to let them do this. The only thing standing between the Roding being killed with sewage pollution for decades to come is all of you. We don’t need ‘citizen scientists’ monitoring the decline of the river whilst justifying big river charity staff salaries to ‘engage’ people in a dying river. We need citizen investigators & campaigners: determined to find where the illegal sewage is coming from & then get it stopped by any (peaceful) means possible.