Plan to sacrifice Shropshire river with Severn Trent Water sewage transfer “hatched behind closed doors”

Anglers in South Shropshire have joined together with local residents and environmental groups to object to a plan to divert sewage into the River Onny.

The scheme, devised by Severn Trent Water, Shropshire Council, Natural England and the Environment Agency, working together as the “Strategic Clun Liaison Group”, is to build a pipeline to take sewage currently discharged into the River Kemp in the Clun catchment from Bishop’s Castle treatment works and transfer it into the next valley to be discharged into the River Onny instead. The minutes of this ‘Group’ are not published.  

The advanced nature of the plan came to light following information requests made by Fish Legal to Severn Trent Water who confirmed that spending for the pipeline had been included in its 2025-2030 business plan.

Today, Fish Legal has written to the chief executives of all of the decision-making bodies involved to object to the building of the pipeline over concerns that sewage spills and additional nutrients being released into the river Onny will degrade it. Questions have also been raised as to why upgrading, improving or increasing capacity at existing works to treat sewage at Bishop’s Castle is not a viable option.

Fish Legal is acting on behalf of several angling clubs who will be potentially affected by the scheme, including the Plowden Fishing Club whose members fish the River Onny where the new pipeline will discharge. 

Responses from Severn Trent Water to further information requests suggest that discharges of both untreated and treated wastewater will be redirected to the Onny. 

According to the Environment Agency’s own published data, Bishop’s Castle’s Union Street CSO discharged untreated sewage 123 times for 829.84 hours in 2023, 71 times for 280.87 hours in 2022 and 122 times for 566.36 hours in 2021. 

The Clun is a highly protected Special Area of Conservation (SAC) but is currently in unfavourable condition due to poor water quality, particularly due to high levels of nutrients. It is thought that the plan to divert sewage to the River Onny is a way around constraints on new developments in the Clun catchment that increase nutrient pollution of the protected river.

Geoff Hardy, Solicitor at Fish Legal said: “Rerouting sewage releases from one river to another that is miles away but has less legal protections cannot be the way to solve pollution and planning problems in this country. This is illustrative of the whole mess surrounding water industry activity and regulation to protect our rivers.”

He added: “On the face of it, this is a cynical ‘gaming’ exercise by a shadowy cabal of regulators and the local council to get around current restrictions on adding more pollution to the River Clun. We want to know why other options were not prioritised and why the Environment Agency appear to have agreed to this given that their own latest fishery report recommended using the Onny as an Index river- a critical means by which fish populations are monitored.”

John Wood from Plowden Fishing Club “Our club has been fishing the river Onny as far back as the 1880s and we hold a deep affection for it, as do so many local residents.  It is home to healthy populations of wild brown trout and grayling and it is also an important nursery for Atlantic Salmon. Recently much effort has been put into improving the habitat for wildlife, including restoring a meander to a section that had been straightened in the 1950s. The river’s water quality is still not as good as it could be. We certainly don’t want our efforts and the future of the Onny to be put in jeopardy “

He added: “The scheme to divert sewage from Bishop’s Castle and put it into the Onny has been hatched behind closed doors without any consultation with us or anyone else in the local community.  Severn Trent should focus on improving the water quality in the river Clun, not dumping their problem into another river.”

The angling clubs have joined together with other local people to form the Onny Preservation Group to object to the planned pipeline.