The River Test is an internationally renowned chalk stream. Southern Water has installed equipment to pump waste directly from underground sewers into the river. It said the process would involve “transferring screened, filtered and settled, highly dilute wastewater” to the watercourse.
The Crown actor James Murray has branded the plans to pour diluted sewage into the River Test as “sacrilegious.”
LINK (via BBC)
It was also “sacriligeous” (not to mention extremely greedy on the river’s fishery owners’ part) to turn the historic, hallowed Test into a gorgeously pretty but oversized stocked trout raceway and sure-fire fishing track for big bucks political and corporate days out sorts much better suited to playing around on super-manicured golfcourses for so many years. Fished the river a fair bit at one time, far preferring the post-trout season, you and a rod and some nymphs and dries, a river in winter and nobody else, wild fish grayling-fishing, at least until this became yet another must-do new thing and a “Ka-ching! / Ker-ching!” revenue stream. (When I first fished the river as a kid in the 1960s, the Test keepers used to net the grayling in their waters and bury them in bankside pits / use them as kitchen garden fertilizer, as did those of the River Kennet, where, as late as the early-mid 1980s, I was permitted to fish for grayling on several stretches provided that I killed every fish caught. Blissfully unobserved, I returned every one of the thousands that I caught.)
You know, I sometimes wonder why there are so few young British flyfishers starting and coming through these days….
Boote Out.
PS – Apologies for my thunder-fingered “sacrilegious” above.
Lab equipment is very expensive and you need a lot of different machines if you want to make a comprehensive test. You should know there is no generic test for “insecticides” or “fertilizers” or “pharmaceuticals”. You need to know what you are looking for in advance specifically and then look for it with the appropriate methodology (and equipment).
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