Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

So here are the key takeaways from #Rivercide.
1. We're rightly disgusted by the privatised water companies, cutting their costs by dumping raw sewage into our rivers.
But revolting and extreme as this is, it’s NOT the primary cause of river pollution in the UK.
Thread/

2. So what is? The answer will surprise many people.
Farming.
There are several reasons: soil erosion, fertilisers, pesticides etc.
But the most extreme cause is this: industrial livestock units.
The problem is simply stated: they produce too much dung for the land to absorb.

3. They gather nutrients from a large area and release them into a small one. Modern chicken farms, for example, channel soya from vast areas of Brazil and Argentina into huge numbers of birds in industrial units. The nutrients in their dung are spread on the surrounding land.

4. The soil can’t absorb them all. It soon saturates. The surplus, from then on, washes into the river. It doesn’t matter whether farmers pump it directly into the river or spread it on their fields in just the way the rules demand. Eventually it ends up in the water.

5. So once a certain number of chicken, dairy or pig units have been built in a catchment, from then on the tragedy is preordained. Even if there were effective government monitoring and enforcement, it would make little difference. The fate of the river has been determined.

6. In other words, the crucial decision point in the story is when planning permission is granted for industrial livestock units to be built. The local authorities granting it, and the regulators issuing environmental permits, sign the death warrant for the river.

7. Astonishingly, in many cases no environmental decision is made at all, because below a certain, very high threshold (40,000 chickens or 1,000 pigs) a livestock unit DOES NOT REQUIRE an environmental permit. It’s a shocking and disgraceful regulatory failure.

8. Worse still, we discovered that, in the Wye catchment and many others, no attempt is made to assess the *cumulative impact* of the livestock units pouring nutrients into the river. Each one is assessed as if it existed in isolation.

9. In theory, you could truck away the surplus manure, and spread it on arable land somewhere else. But its water content is high and its value is low, so, according to an agronomist I know, the maximum viable distance is between 5 and 10 miles.

10. As agriculture has specialised, some regions have concentrated almost entirely on livestock, and some on arable. To shift the manure to arable regions would in many cases require journeys of dozens or even hundreds of miles. The diesel would cost more than the dung.

11. Incidentally, given the drug residues, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, heavy metals and other substances in this manure, we shouldn't be spreading it anywhere. Let alone allowing it to wash into our rivers.

12. In other words, the only way of saving the rivers blighted by manure pollution (mostly in the west and north of the UK) is to shut down at least some, and probably most, of the industrial livestock units in their catchments.

13. In our film, the Welsh minister for rural affairs, Lesley Griffiths AM, appeared to commit to reversing her own decisions and closing livestock units if she deems it necessary to save our rivers. That's big news. Let's demand similar commitments in the rest of the UK.

14. On the positive side, the song we asked @owensheers and @charlottechurch to write, The River Is Us, is just amazing. It's a stunning, beautiful anthem for our rivers. It got a bit distorted in transmission, but will be released in other ways. Let's get it to Number 1.

15. Christmas single campaign?

16. Anyway, you can watch it all here:

17. With massive thanks to the director @frannyarmstrong, the producer @NicolaCutcher and the hard-working, amazing, underpaid crew, all of whom mobilised their great skills to pull off what many told us was an impossible feat: the world's first live investigative documentary.

18. Huge thanks too to our amazing contributors
Angela Jones
Nathan Jubb
Morgan Jones
Ash Smith
Peter Hammond
Christine Hugh Jones
Alison Caffyn
Lesley Griffiths
Benjamin Zephaniah
Emily Tilling
Gavin Bown
Feargal Sharkey
Karen Shackleton
Jo Elworthy
Owen Sheers
Charlotte Church