MP praises 'excellent meeting' on £78 million Shropshire rivers project
Residents in south Shropshire took the opportunity to learn about a £78 million project which aims to make local stretches of river good enough to swim in.
Severn Trent Water director James Jesic and the company's bathing rivers lead Wilfred Denga, were joined by Ludlow MP Philip Dunne at community roadshow event in Ludlow on Friday.
The water company is investing a massive £78m to enhance 50km of river in Shropshire and Warwickshire, by creating bathing rivers on the Rivers Teme and Leam.
Mr Dunne, who chairs the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, also had the chance to see part of what is one of the most extensive monitoring programmes in the industry. The company is monitoring water quality at 50 locations, and supplier EMS demonstrated how the equipment works after the community event held at the Mascall Centre.
The project will be completed in 2025 and the company says good progress has been made. Work includes site investigation ahead of network improvements in the new year. They are building bigger capacity and storage within the water system.
As well as holding focus groups with communities to understand what they would like to see from an online platform on river quality and real time river data, they say work has been started to work with farmers to help make sure they are doing their bit to improve and protect rivers too.
Mr Dunne tweeted afterwards that it had been an "excellent meeting to explain their #GetRiverPositive plans to improve water quality of River Teme from Leintwardine to Tenbury Wells, including investing in treatment works at Ludlow over next two to three years."
