Robert Macfarlane: We shouldn’t have to risk our health every time we get in the water

There was a time when I would plunge into almost any stream, river or lake I passed, pretty much whatever the weather. Crossing the line between land and water was an everyday magic; a familiar liberation from routines and confinements, as mind and body found themselves suspended in a new element.

Twenty years on, that pleasure has been rendered almost impossible. As water companies have loaded up on debt and diverted vital investment into the pockets of shareholders, our waterways have thickened with sewage, agricultural pollution, forever-chemicals and diseases. To dive into a river now is all too often to enter a murky, hazardous zone, turbid with the run-off from corporate neglect.

I recently saw a Southern Water riverbank sign badged brightly with a blue logo reading ‘Water For Life’ – and instructing passersby to ‘avoid contact with the water…If you’ve had contact with the water, please wash your hands before eating or drinking.’

How did it come to this: that the water of our rivers became first undrinkable, then unswimmable, then untouchable? It shouldn’t be this way. We shouldn’t have to risk our health every time we even approach our rivers, lakes and seas.

On the election trail, Labour talked tough on water, promising to end the “Tory sewage scandal”.  Introducing her autumn budget, Rachel Reeves cited the broken river system inherited from the previous government. But in power, the party has ducked the chance to bring meaningful reform to water regulators and fallen for the water company narrative on nationalisation hook, line and sinker.

Instead of restoring our waterways, treasury ministers have made a grab for millions of pounds in fines that had been earmarked to heal our rivers. And they’ve sat by as Thames Water has diverted cash that was pledged for environmental clean-ups into dividends, and launched a successful appeal to raise customers’ bills even higher – with the majority of the £3bn raised to be spent servicing existing debt and paying fees, rather than investing in infrastructure.

Meanwhile the devastation goes on. The latest figures show that companies are dumping more sewage than ever, with firms discharging untreated waste for more than 3.6 million hours of discharges in 2023, while payouts to shareholders continued to rise.

Rivers run through us; they run through people as surely as they run through places. They hydrate and nourish both us and the land. But our waterways are dying – and they must be revived.

It’s time for Labour to make good on its many promises. It’s time for decisive, clear action to end the scandal of water pollution once and for all. Regulation must be enforced, monitoring increased, polluters prosecuted, infrastructure investment massively increased – and the Independent Water Commission must recommend detailed, transformational reform of the sector. There has to be a better future for rivers, seas, people and nature. For our fate flows with that of water – and it always has.

• Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? will be published by Hamish Hamilton on 1 May 2025.