River Onny waste pipeline plan scrapped
Plans for a pipeline to release treated waste water into a Shropshire river have been scrapped.Severn Trent Water had proposed building a four-mile pipe to take treated sewage from its plant in Bishop's Castle and discharge it into the River Onny, which sparked a local campaign against the move.The water company said on Friday that the plan would not proceed, as early modelling had shown it was not possible to guarantee that there would be no impact on the Onny.The company added that, from the start of consultations, it had been made clear the plans would only go ahead if there was no "adverse impact" on the river.
The water currently enters the Snakescroft Brook, which runs into the River Kemp and in turn the River Clun.The Clun is protected by law as it is a conservation area, but the Onny does not have the same status.Severn Trent said its original proposal aimed to improve the Clun, but it would no longer proceed after the results of the "initial water quality modelling work".
Ruth Houghton, councillor for Bishop's Castle at Shropshire Council, posted on Facebook that she was "very pleased" with Severn Trent's decision not to proceed with the pipeline.The Onny Preservation Group, which includes local anglers and landowners, had launched a petition against the plans that attracted more than 9,200 signatures.Severn Trent said an alternative proposal would now need to be developed and added that the decision had been agreed upon by all groups involved, which included the Environment Agency and Natural England.A spokesperson for the company said they hoped the decision not to proceed with the Onny pipeline would be "reassuring news" for many members of the community.
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The Guardian
19 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘It takes 25 years for a footprint to disappear' – the secret, beguiling magic of Britain's bogs
I haven't found an hour when I don't love a bog. Recently, after a night of counting rare caterpillars in Borth in Mid Wales (they come out only after dark), walking back to the car under the glow of a flower moon, I wondered if 2am was my new favourite. I felt very safe, held by the bog's softness, and everyone that was out at that hour seemed to have a sense of humour. I met a nightjar hopping around on the ground, pretending, I think, to be a frog. But there is also something about the humidity of a languid afternoon on a bog, when everything slows and fat bumbles hum, that is surprisingly good. I have done freezing horizontal rain and thick, cold-to-your-bones fog and wind so howling that I couldn't think. All of those were hard, but I did come away feeling truly alive. I have travelled to the tip of Scotland and far beyond to visit bogs. In all the hours, days and weeks I have spent on them, I have learned that time behaves differently. It stretches out like the bog landscape, seeming to still the world beyond. There is something very special about that. Like many of us, I came to know bogs not by visiting one, but by ripping open a bag of compost and plunging my hands into the soft, dark peat. Then I learned that there was more to peat than an amiable bed in which to coax a plant to grow. It is ripped from a living, breathing entity with complex ways and wants. We sneer at bogs, we tease them and drain them, scrape at them and pillage them, but give them back their waters and they care not just for the creatures that live on them, but those much further afield. There is more carbon stored in peatlands than in all the above-ground vegetation in the world. They account for 3% of landmass, but hold at least 30% of soil carbon. Seventy per cent of the UK's drinking water starts its journey on peatlands, where the bogs not only filter but also slow water, helping to mitigate flooding. This is why draining, extracting and turning peat into agricultural land has consequences. Roughly 80% of the UK's peatlands are damaged, polluting our water, exacerbating flooding and increasing the risk of fires. But this knowledge doesn't stop us using extracted peat. Sure, I don't buy peat compost, but I have eaten fresh cultivated mushrooms (most large-scale growing is done in peat), bought supermarket basil (usually peat-grown), 'saved' numerous discounted houseplants (only about 11% of houseplants are truly grown peat-free) and eaten lettuce, celery, potatoes, carrots, peas, beans and tomatoes, some of which are grown in the UK on drained peat, as well as crisps, biscuits, cakes and chips made with palm oil grown on drained peatlands in south-east Asia. Most of us are complicit in damaging, extracting and wasting peat, despite years of writing, campaigning, shouting and imploring. I decided I would get to know the bogs, to learn their ways and stories and see if a different song might stir the soul. Bogs are magical in many ways. These ancient beings are much more than their brown flatness suggests from a distance. Below the surface, they seduce water with their engineering. Under every bog is a sea held in suspension, so when you walk over a bog you are truly walking on water. It is why they wobble when you jump up and down on them. They are nature's answer to a water bed. Don't jump, though – they are fragile places. It takes an average of 25 years for a footprint to disappear. What is a bog? Well, there are many types of peatlands, but broadly speaking peat is either fen or – more frequently – bog. A fen is alkali: it gets its water from a ground or surface source and is flushed with minerals because of it. A bog is acid: it is fed entirely by the sky, which means it is very poor in nutrients. Bogs form in wet places, where the humidity and rainfall are high and evapotranspiration (the combined process where water moves from land to air) is low. Many of them start life as a depression, a hollow or a dip in the land that starts to fill with water. The rock below is hard, often impervious, such as granite, and the water pools. As the climate and world around it change, things begin to grow around the bog: plants spring up, die, fall in the water. The dip starts to fill with rotting organic matter, creating oxygen-poor, acidic conditions. Most things don't want to grow in waters that are turning acidic, but mosses don't mind; in fact, they thrive. This is particularly true of bog mosses, which are from the genus Sphagnum. The mosses creep in, the rain continues to fall and the bog is born, made up of plants, mostly mosses, some rushes and a few shrubs, living and dying, but not completely rotting. This is what peat is: partially decomposed organic matter. When it is wet, it is happy; when it is drained of water, it starts rotting again. A similar process happens with fens. But whereas peat is extracted from bogs to be used for compost, most of our lowland fens have been drained for agriculture. That flush of minerals from the groundwater makes them fertile places, once drained. Peat in the northern hemisphere is mostly made up of mosses. They call the shots; they are the ecosystem engineers. These tiny, centimetre-high plants are alchemists, taking only what falls from the sky and creating a kind of immortality for themselves as they strive to be dead and alive at the same time. They do this by pickling themselves and everything that falls into the bog in acid, which means nothing entirely rots away. The bog mosses' pickle juice also prevents bigger plants from doing too well and shading out the moss. The mosses do this in such style, too. They don't stick to the run-of-the-mill green – they come in every jewel tone imaginable: golds and oranges, neon-green emeralds, lobster pinks and deep wine reds, in russets and chestnut browns, their colours turning with the seasons, deepening across the summer. What appears flat from a distance up close rises and falls in miniature mountains of hummock-type mosses, with valleys, pools and lawns of looser types. The things that live on and in this world have run with this otherworldly theme. There are the giants: bog bush-crickets with their huge antennae; emperor moths with their peacock-like eyespots on their wings; darters, damselflies and dragonflies of all colours that often come to peer at you curiously if you sit for a while. This is to say nothing of the green-eyed horseflies, which are a terrifying size, although it is hard to not be beguiled by their giant emerald eyes. There are frogs, toads, lizards, snakes and so many spiders, including one of Britain's largest, the raft spider. Spend long enough at a bog pool and you might spot one floating, waiting for the vibrations of prey, only to run across the surface of the water and pounce. They go for prey as large as tadpoles, but if you frighten them, they dive and swim underwater. Imagine that – a swimming spider! These are just the easy-to-spot guys. There is an abundance of tiny insects: pseudoscorpions, gnats, midges (not all of which bite), strange-looking larvae and tiny micromoths that flit about. These bring an abundance of other wings. Peatlands are hugely important habitats for birds: hen harriers, golden and white-tipped eagles, merlins, owls, jack snipes, golden plovers, curlews, lapwings, pipits, snow buntings, grouse, dunlins, redshanks and, at coastal edges, strange-looking ducks. A chorus of beings in full song for those intrepid enough to venture in. For that is the thing about bogs: they are not hugely interested in wowing you. The mountains have good views and the forest has majesty; the sand dunes sculpture and the wildflower meadow an easy romance. But the bog is quite happy to be passed over – it will share its best secrets only with those who carefully tiptoe in and are patient enough to wait a while to see what comes out once they have settled down. The bog has other secrets, too: underneath this living layer, preserved in all that peat, is an archive of our past doings. A healthy bog grows just a millimetre a year, which puts in context anyone who tries to argue that cutting peat is sustainable. It is important to remember that less than 13% of our bogs are considered healthy, or in a near-natural state. But each millimetre is a record of everything that happened that year: it holds big data, such as fragments of moth wings or pollen and seeds, and tiny microbe data, such as all the amoeba that dined on the semi-rotting plant material before it got weighed down by water. This allows scientists to take a core sample and tell you what the climate was like 6,000 years ago, which plants grew there, which moths fluttered and which bees buzzed, who crawled over and passed by. There are other buried treasures. The most famous are the bog bodies, including Denmark's iron-age Tollund Man and Ireland's bronze-age Cashel Man, but you can also find hoards of coins, jewellery and weapons, as well as pots and pans, fishing nets, whole canoes, carts and cartwheels and even butter. When our ancestors buried all this, they knew it wouldn't disappear or rot away. It is believed that this is why so much of it is decommissioned, broken and bent, just in case the bog was a portal to another world and the undead might be able to use it when they rose again. Ritually buried bog butter is often found near bog bodies. It represents such a huge amount of milk to a culture only just beginning to farm that if it wasn't a gift to the gods, perhaps it was a gift to the bog itself. The bog certainly represented seasonal abundance for those who knew where to look. It was a source of plant medicines, dyes and fibres. Then there is the rich foraging opportunity: cranberries, bilberries and cowberries, as well as all the meat and eggs from otters, fish and fowl. Not an easy place to get on or off, but useful nevertheless. The reverence our ancestors felt for bogs is a lesson we need to remember. They aren't barren or desolate, although many are certainly remote. They shouldn't be drained or burned to make them productive, nor should they be extracted from. What they need is our respect, because peatlands are the air-conditioning units of the world. Their long-term storage of carbon and filtering of water is helping to keep our climate cool. And no one needs the air-con turned off now. Cors y Llyn near Builth Wells in Powys is a great example of a quaking bog, with strange, stunted ancient Scots pines growing on it. This perfect little bog is surrounded by wonderful orchid meadows (above) and you can nearly always find wild cranberries creeping over the mosses. There is an accessible boardwalk. The Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland is a Unesco world heritage site and perhaps the crown jewel of the UK's peatlands. The biggest blanket bog complex in Europe, it is rich not just in bird life, but also in neolithic structures. Start at the RSPB Forsinard Flows reserve. Swarth Moor is a raised mire next to the village of Helwith Bridge in Ribblesdale. It is home to three nationally scarce species of dragonfly – black darter, common hawker and emerald damselfly. There is well-surfaced bridleway around the southern edge, leading to a viewing platform that gives you a peatland vista without you getting bogged down. The South Pennines is good peat country, with moors galore. Highlights include the moorlands around Gunnerside village, Haworth Moor (above, of Wuthering Heights fame) and Tarn Moss, a raised bog owned by the National Trust. Marches Mosses, a group of lowland raised bogs on the border of Wales and Shropshire, are not without the scars of human intervention – peat cutting, drainage for agriculture, forestry – but still there is a wealth of peatland wildlife, particularly damselflies and dragonflies. There are trails around Bettisfield Moss, Wem Moss and Fenn's and Whixall mosses. Dartmoor in Devon is a vast upland area of peat; much of it is damaged and dominated by purple moor grass, but restoration work is changing this. The visitors centre at Postbridge has Tor Royal Bog, the only raised bog in Devon and Cornwall, while the nearby Fox Tor Mire is a good example of a valley blanket bog. Peatlands by Alys Fowler is out now (Hodder Press, £20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Stratford-upon-Avon BBQ plea sees people urged to use takeaways
People have been asked to buy food and drink from takeaway restaurants rather than use disposable barbecues in District Council urged people not to use disposable appliances in any green space this summer because of environmental and safety hazards, and also warned of the dangers of lighting years have seen visitors and residents using throwaway barbecues on the Recreation Ground, in Welcombe Hills, Clopton Park and other green spaces.A council spokesman said the barbecues took several hours to fully cool, which meant they were often left where they were, or left in or near a litter bin, presenting a "significant danger". "The district council urges anyone thinking of using a disposable barbeque on green spaces within the district to instead purchase food and drinks from many of the local takeaway restaurants," he incident in 2023 saw the contents of a waste lorry set on fire after a barbecue was put in a recycling bin, he barbecues had caused forest fires elsewhere across the country, he appliances cannot be recycled, he said, adding that burning charcoal also released pollutants. Follow BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
The ‘sacrifice zone': villagers resist the EU's green push for lithium mining
Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet routine when he and his partner quit the chaos of London's catering industry for the fog-misted hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village in which he was raised. But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked resistance from residents who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumbling thunder of heavy trucks. 'They are destroying everything,' said Gomes, who runs the only cafe in the village with his partner. 'They are taking our peace.' Covas do Barroso is among the first villages caught up in Europe's efforts to green its economy. As the continent weans itself off fossil fuels that poison the air and heat the planet, demand for lithium is surging, to build batteries that can run electric vehicles and balance renewable-heavy power grids. Across Europe, people living near lithium deposits appear unconvinced that mines will bring good jobs and are unmoved by pleas to stop a bigger ecological threat. Attempts to push projects through in the face of local resistance have been met with cries of 'colonialism'. In Serbia, broad swathes of society have taken to the streets over the past year to protest against a lithium mine planned for the Jadar valley. In France, a lithium mine planned beneath a kaolin quarry in Allier has alarmed activists and divided residents. In Covas do Barroso, in northern Portugal, people say their village – at the heart of a heritage farming region recognised by the United Nations – has been turned into a 'sacrifice zone'. 'You're talking about destroying an area that has been classified as a globally important agricultural heritage site, an example of sustainability, an area with a system of water management that is at least over 500 years old,' said Catarina Alves Scarrott, a member of the protest group Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso (UDCB). 'You're going to sacrifice all of this for open-pit mines. And then, you start to ask: for what?' The answer, for EU officials and the Portuguese government, is to obtain a soft white metal that is needed to stop burning fuels that make extreme weather dramatically worse – and do so without relying exclusively on foreign suppliers. Europe produces almost no lithium itself. More than three-quarters of the world's raw supply comes from just three countries: Australia, Chile and China. The latter dominates the refined supply of lithium too. Anxious about energy security and scrambling to get more mines dug at home, the European Commission set a target last year of meeting 10% of demand for critical raw materials from domestic sources by 2030. In March, it listed the planned mine in Covas as one of 47 strategic mineral projects that would benefit from 'coordinated support' to become operational. The decision is being challenged by MiningWatch Portugal, ClientEarth and UDCB, which lodged a complaint with the commission in June. Environmental concerns about waste and water are not the only factors that have left communities such as Covas wary of prospectors. Kwasi Ampofo, a metals and mining analyst at BloombergNEF, said the sales pitch had been made harder by the mining industry's historically poor reputation for safety and the lack of skilled domestic labour forces to profit from the work. 'It's going to be very hard for the EU to develop primary sources of lithium domestically,' he said. 'Not impossible, but very hard.' In Covas, the long-running struggle between villagers and miners has intensified as political support for the project has grown. The Portuguese environment ministry granted the British mining company Savannah Resources a one-year 'administrative easement' in December that allows it to prospect in the land around Covas. The villagers filed an injunction that held up the process, but the ministry quickly allowed work to resume, arguing it was in the public interest. People in the village, where a tattered banner declares 'no to the mine, yes to life', say they feel misled by the miners and betrayed by the government. They accuse the company of trespassing on land it does not own – much of which is held in common ownership – and downplaying the nature and scale of the project. But opinions in the surrounding Boticas region are mixed, with some hopeful the project will boost a neglected rural economy. Savannah Resources declined to comment. It has previously told local media it is acting within the law and makes efforts to keep people informed. It projects the mine will produce enough lithium for half a million EV batteries a year and describes itself as 'enabling Europe's energy transition'. But the continent-wide resistance to lithium mining reveals a snag that green groups and mining companies alike have been reluctant to acknowledge. While surveys find vast public support for stronger climate action – as much as 80-89%, according to a project by the Guardian and newsrooms around the world – the infrastructure for a carbon-free economy carries trade-offs that affected communities are often reluctant to bear. Some residents of Covas, which is itself threatened by wildfires and droughts, say they recognise the tension, even if they consider the costs too great. 'Every village faced with a mine will say 'no, no, no', I get that,' said Jorge Esteves, a forestry worker. 'But what's different here is the proximity to our homes.' Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Gomes, the cafe owner, said he would also have fought an oilwell if someone had tried to drill one in Covas. 'I don't agree with that either, though I have a car – but that's already happening,' he said. 'We do need to find a solution, but what we are doing now is not a solution.' Studies have shown that a societal shift away from private cars – such as creating walkable cities with good public transport – would greatly limit the rise in demand for lithium, as would halting the surge in SUVs that need big batteries. Analysts note there are also significant quantities of lithium in electronic waste such as phones and laptops that do not get recycled. For the lithium that does need to be extracted, harvesting it from brine does less damage to the environment than mining it from rocks. But with 250m combustion engine cars on EU roads and next to no lithium produced at home, electrifying vehicle fleets without domestic sources of lithium would still mean extracting more abroad. Analysts fear this would largely take place in regions with weaker environment and human rights laws. 'It's not necessarily a dilemma with no exit, but it's a real one,' said Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College who visited Covas and several others mining regions when writing a book about lithium extraction. Mines were most likely to face resistance from people when developers failed to include them in the decision-making process, she added. 'It's not the environmental risks or the water risks on their own – if they're not combined with a sense of exclusion, then oftentimes those don't in and of themselves cause protests,' she said. 'It's the harm combined with the lack of voice to be able to say something about that harm.' In the green hills of Covas, it is unclear whether a friendlier approach by Savannah and the authorities would have won people over or simply tempered their rage. But the anger at the process is palpable. 'The biggest shock initially was not even the impact of the mine,' said Alves Scarrott, who grew up in Covas and moved to London. 'It's the attack on democracy, and democratic processes, and the rights of the people that live there.'
