We are delighted that our Urban Pollution Monitoring project has won the Rivers Trust Award for Science and Innovation.

Bella receives the award from Ivor Lewelyn, Director of the Atlantic Salmon Trust

The project was created in partnership with the Environment Agency (EA) so that trained Wandle Trust volunteers can respond to assess minor pollution incidents in place of EA staff and feed information back into the EA’s National Incident Recording System.

This enables reports of pollution (called in to the EA’s Incident line – 0800 80 70 60) to be attended more quickly and frees up the EA to spend more time on pollution prevention visits. The project has also been extended to include the regular monitoring of known polluting outfalls which has led to greater understanding of the extent of the pollution and a number of these outfalls have been addressed.

Many many thanks to all our wonderful and dedicated Pollution Assessment Volunteers, and also to the very supportive staff at the EA – in particular Kate and Richard. If you’d like to get involved with the project please contact pollution@wandletrust.org.