Affinity Water has begun work restoring five rivers in its catchment and set out plans to complete 30 projects on 13 rivers by 2025.
Working with the Wildlife Trust, Environment Agency, local authorities and other community groups, the company embarked on improvements to the Upper Lea, Beane and Gade chalk rivers.
The projects include restoring the natural course of rivers by removing manmade obstacles such as weirs, tree management to allow more light, planting native species of aquatic vegetation to improve riverbank habitat and narrowing channels to increase the flow speed.
Works are due to be completed on this stage of Affinity’s plans by early 2022 with further projects to begin on the Misbourne as well as more stretches of the Upper Lea, Beane and Gade to improve their ecological health.
David Watts, senior asset manager for Affinity, said: “Our ambition is to improve river health and create favourable conditions allowing certain fish species, wildlife and plants back into these rivers. We are hoping that a combination of factors will contribute to this including, reducing agricultural runoff and pollution from surface water into the river and removing historical man-made inventions. We need to increase the ecological health of the rivers before plant and invertebrate’s species can re-establish.”
The company was the first to pledge an end to abstraction from chalk streams in its catchment that have suffered from neglect as well as the effects of climate change and population growth. The south east of England is home to 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity-rich chalk streams so the water companies in this part of the country jointly agreed to work to improve and restore the rivers.
Affinity launched a public campaign called Save Our Streams to raise awareness of the part consumers play on river health and how water usage in homes can impact the natural environment.
Since May more than 90,000 people have signed up to reduce their water use through receiving tailored advice and practical help from the company.
Across its supply area, Affinity will significantly reduce groundwater abstraction in the Ver, Mimram, Upper Lea and Misbourne catchments by 2024 to leave more water in the environment.