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Keith Arthur: amazed by deal

In these days of massive amounts of money being bandied about as chicken-feed - how much is even a pretty ordinary footballer worth, for example - we seem to have lost track of financial reality but in real life, half a million quid is a LOT of dough!

Keith Arthur
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How refreshing it is to see someone muck up, then hold their hands up and accept responsibility.

Thames Water confessed immediately to polluting the River Wandle and, after negotiations with the ACA (Anglers' Conservation Association), settled immediately, even before the courts found them guilty.

Whilst that might be surprising in its own right, the settlement can only be described as unbelievable.

The total figure, which will be partly spread over five years, is £500,000. In these days of massive amounts of money being bandied about as chicken-feed - how much is even a pretty ordinary footballer worth, for example - we seem to have lost track of financial reality but in real life, half a million quid is a LOT of dough! It's £500 a week for 20 years if it were wages, for example.

I have some reservations on the amount because I think it sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Currently many polluters are quite content to settle out-of-court and £10,000 is cheaper than facing a judge for a day in most cases.

When one reaches the realm of six-digit payouts, some polluters may find it cheaper to risk a court case and suffer the costs. After all it's a bit like handball on the goal line in football; the penalty might be missed.

But putting that to one side, the negotiating skills of the ACA's Mark Lloyd and his team and the embarrassment of Thames Water coincided beautifully and the Wandle is going to be the major benefactor, as well as those that regularly throw a line there.

I lived in South Wimbledon, virtually in sight of the river, for almost 20 years, in the 70s and 80s. It looked fantastic: huge beds of ranunculus, the main indicator of clean, chalk-stream water, wafted in the flow, of which there was plenty.

Huge hatches of flies, even mayfly, dimpled the surface, in fact it is one of the most incongruous sights I have seen: mayfly hatching opposite a London Transport bus garage in Colliers Wood, London, SW18. The only thing missing was fish.

Odd specimens were slipped in surreptitiously then the Environment Agency started test plantings of fish and they seemed to survive and do well. Even brown trout were introduced in cages at first so they couldn't disappear - or be disappeared by the local 'herberts'. Once they survived without problems, stocking began in earnest.

Dray horses

From the confluence with the Thames, next to the famous 'Ram' Brewery from where, to this day, dray horses still deliver Young's Ales to local pubs, up to Earlsfield, those in the know had been 'bagging' with big dace, gudgeon and odd roach, plus some decent chub - even trout and carp showed from time to time but these were almost certainly transient stocks which could retreat to the tidal Thames when water quality declined.

Once the river's own fish were put in, they grew at a fantastic rate, fed by the natural larder that had accumulated during those fish-free years when the river was already clean.

The dace, in particular were soon being caught over 8oz but after a few years two species really stood out: barbel and roach. On the deeper sections - and deep on the Wandle means 4ft or more - roach of 1lb, then a pound-and-a-half, even 2lbers were being taken by skilful anglers prepared to put the time in and find the bigger fish. It wasn't easy because of the hordes of lesser specimens.

The barbel were caught on shallower sections where the gravel bottom. Soon after the turn of the century, double-figure barbel were spoken of in hushed tones - no one gives away information about such fish on a free fishery. Brown trout were occasional chance captures and 'liberated' koi carp could be seen cruising in the shallows in Ravensbury Park.

On these shallow sections the bottom is clearly visible; gravel brightly polished by the rapidity of the flow. And it was that very flow that, ironically, caused the demise of the river.

So much water is abstracted from the chalk aquifer that spawns the southern chalk streams that the vast majority of water in them emanates from water treatment works; sewage farms is a more readily-used term.

When a worker on the Beddington Works allowed a quantity of sodium hypochlorite, being used to clean the filter screens, to flush through a sluice into the river, it killed everything for up to 5km downstream.

Power of nature

Many people, me included, felt that it would be decades before the Wandle would become a fishery again but such is the power of nature, in a matter of a few weeks dace were seen swimming where that clean gravel bottom had been covered by a carpet of corpses.

Just three weeks ago an acquaintance captured roach of 1lb 12oz and 2lb 2oz from a stretch thought to have been completely wiped out.

This week the Environment Agency introduced 5,000 fish between one and two years old that should survive and form the basis of the spawning stocks of the future. Some of that £500k will be spent on more fish too.

Most of it however will be invested in the River Wandle's future which, with the failsafe mechanisms installed since the disaster at Beddington, should be more secure than at any time in the past 100 years. There are backwaters planned as spawning areas and plenty of work on improving banks and access to them. A full-time co-ordinator will be employed to make sure everything is carried out according to plan.

So, a phoenix has risen from the ashes: the Wandle will be re-born yet again. My opinion is that it will never reach the heights it had reached on the section of river below Beddington for 3-4km, because the original situation was unique: a river full of life, except fish.

Now it is devoid of life, except fish, but that life IS returning and in five years time the story will be very different and all thanks to the efforts of the ACA and the acceptance of guilt by Thames Water. It is a shame it ever happened but, accepting that it did, this is the best possible outcome and one that even I didn't see coming.

By the way, if the clubs with an interest hadn't been ACA members, none of the good stuff may ever have happened. If you're not a member, or your club hasn't signed up, maybe the question you should be asking is why.