RIVER CHERWELL
Tipping point
A GUARDIAN for the River Cherwell says the enormous illegal waste dump next to the A34 in Oxfordshire is the “nail in the coffin” for the waterway and a “catastrophic blow to the health of its ecosystem”.
Last year, sampling along the river found it was already in poor ecological health with high levels of nitrate indicating run-off from agriculture.
The illegal dump of thousands of tonnes of waste near Kidlington sits on a flood plain which satellite images shows under water last year. River levels are already rising with heavy rain this winter. While the Environment Agency (EA) maintains that the dump is ten metres from the Cherwell, campaigners Friends of the Thames have photographs showing the river level has already risen to submerge the southern end of the rubbish heap.