Shan Oakes, our Green town councillor in Knaresborough, said the town council was planning to apply for designated bathing status for a stretch of the Nidd.She hoped that it would mean that something had to be done about its poor water quality.Cllr Oakes blamed the government for the current situation:
“With the current situation where water is privatised, the government does not hold [water companies] to account as it should. The government has decimated the Environment Agency.”
Read the article in the Stray Ferret.>
Councillor Shan Oakes's letter to the Harrogate Advertiser.
Some children became ill this summer after swimming in the River Nidd. Andrew Jones, MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, voted against the amendment last autumn, calling for action on sewage in rivers. He (and most of his Conservative MP colleagues) were falsely led to believe that real action would be 'too expensive, but they were forced into a U-turn by public outcry. The 'U turn' amendment, however, was a diluted version of the original, leaving plenty of room for sewage to keep flowing into rivers.
The Anglers Trust wrote at the time, 'Public outrage may have forced this welcome U Turn ….(but) we still have a Parliament that voted to allow the scandal of untreated sewage to continue to poison our precious rivers and the wildlife they contain. If Ministers think they can get away with little or no action save for more plans, more monitoring, and more ‘turd counting’ instead of taking meaningful action, then I would respectfully suggest they need to heed the lessons of the last few days…..Failure to question the tidal wave of political crap that was being pumped out prior to last night’s ‘screeching U turn’ has… left a good number of Honourable Members trying to back paddle their way out of Shit Creek.'
Mr Jones's backpaddling included (on the Conservative-run Community News website) attacks on his critics. He said that the environment was “being weaponised, deliberately, cynically, falsely” and that the claims were “simply a lie. ”I say to him; the environment needs people who will speak up for it - demanding urgent action. He has shown, clearly, that he is not one of them.
