'Work to do' but Shrewsbury campaigners encouraged after packed River Severn sewage pollution debate
Campaigners have said there will be no slowing down in the fight against raw sewage in their river after hundreds turned out to a lively meeting.
Salopians turned out in their droves for the Shrewsbury Town Council meeting about river pollution at Theatre Severn on Monday evening.
Claire Kirby, from campaign group Up Sewage Creek, was encouraged by the attendance and the contributions made - particularly by Ash Smith and Professor Becky Malby.
Mr Smith, a campaigner of national prominence, founded the Windrush Against Sewage Pollution group. He went into high levels of detail about how combined sewer over flows work and said "illegal sewage dumping is being normalised".
"This is a serious public health issue," he added, and he said that Severn Trent are "marking their own homework" when it comes to the Environment Agency's "reasons for not achieving good status" with regard to the health of the river.
A clip of sewage underwater - including excrement with undigested sweetcorn - drew a chorus of "eurgh" from the crowd.
Professor Malby led the Ilkley Clean River Campaign, which got the river in Yorkshire to "bathing water" status, and is considered as the benchmark for other campaigners to follow up and down the country.
She detailed how they ran their campaign and encouraged people in Shrewsbury to proceed with clarity to get things done.
After the meeting, Ms Kirby, from the Shrewsbury campaign group, said: "It was very well-attended. I thought Ash Smith and Becky Malby did really interesting presentations. I think we can get some really good ideas about how we should campaign in Shrewsbury from them.
"There is a lot of work to do, but I think we took a lot from it."
Other speakers included Pete Lambert from the Shropshire Wildlife Trust who laid bare the state of the river from a nature perspective, and Shrewsbury Town Council's fisheries boss Andy Jones, who told how top anglers are turning their back on the town and how a young boy ended up with a sanitary pad on the end of his line on his first ever fishing trip in Shrewsbury.
"I had a comment from an angler who took his little boy fishing for the first time at Kingsland Bridge. The little boy caught a sanitary product, and was asking his dad, what are these?
"I'm trying to encourage anglers to come to to get into the sport. The young ones are the future of fishing. It's hardly a good start when they are catching things like that."
Ms Kirby said she found it "quite depressing" to hear.
Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski courted controversy in a brief virtual appearance at the start of the meeting, accusing Shrewsbury town councillors of spouting "misinformation" and being "highly irresponsible", while Ludlow MP Philip Dunne said there had been "very inappropriate politicisation" of the river pollution issue.
Conservative MPs first came under fire over the raw sewage issue in late 2021 after they voted against a proposal from the Lords to the Environment Bill that would have placed legal duties on water companies to reduce discharges.
"He's not really shown the kind of leadership we need," Ms Kirby said of Mr Kawczynski.
The town council will next discuss the river pollution issue at its next full council meeting on March 27.
