SOUTH-EAST LANCASHIRE (RIVER POLLUTION) (Hansard, 19 July 1971)

§ Mr. Kenneth Marks (Manchester, Gorton)

I hesitate to quote poetry to the House at this hour, but some of us learned at school Tennyson's "The Brook" and it is appropriate to quote the following : I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing And here and there a lusty trout And here and there a grayling And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel… There are no lusty trout or grayling in the brooks and rivers in South-East Lancashire. There are plenty of foamy flakes and filthy pollution.

There are times in the House when one could illustrate one's remarks by using films and other aids, but to do justice to this subject I would have to follow Huxley's "Brave New World" and adopt his "smellies" and "feelies".

We heard last week about pollution and the work of the river authorities. Hon. Members had been impressed by those authorities and the magnitude of their task. Probably none of them faces such appalling problems as do the Mersey and the Weaver river authorities, which are responsible for the rivers of South-East Lancashire and the others which flow into the Mersey. The river authorities produce annual reports with maps in various colours to show the condition of rivers. Blue means clean ; yellow, poor or doubtful ; red, bad, and black, very bad. On the map of the rivers of South-East Lancashire a great deal of black ink is needed.

1220 Let me take as an example the River Tame. This river forms part of the boundary of my constituency and separates it from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry), who is present here tonight. It is classified as "Very bad" for most of its entire length. At Stockport it joins the "poor or doubtful" Goyt to form the "bad" River Mersey. The Tame rises in Yorkshire—and has other problems. It competes with its namesake in the Birmingham area and with the tributaries of the Irwell, the Croal, the Roch, the Irk and the Medlock for the title of the most polluted river. If anyone falls in they are taken to hospital in case they need stomach pumping. As the Manchester Evening News said in an editorial on Saturday : At least we ought to make the rivers clean enough so that if you fall in it will be safe enough to open your mouth to shout for help. Yet the Tame Valley could be beautiful. It is true that along parts of it there are industrial buildings, but some of these are old and could be demolished. Other parts are part of a green belt, where only the river is vile. It is an interesting thought that this stretch of land was an industrial belt in the early nineteenth century, with mines and mills and works. Their sites are now hard to trace in the woods which cover the area.

Making the Tame Valley look good is a reasonable proposition. The local authorities together with the Civic Trust are working hard to do that with their Tame Valley Improvement Scheme. I think that all the local authorities in the area are doing something on these lines, and there is the "Green Fingers" policy of the Manchester Corporation, extending to the other valleys and making them reasonable recreation areas.

Making the valley look good is not good enough. There must be a much 1221 more vigorous approach to the cleaning up of the river itself. It may look a hopeless task, but, as the first Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental pollution said, Vigorous policies to improve rivers produce dramatic results. And dramatic results are needed here. Hon. Member from other constituencies could have given similar examples of other rivers.

Even the brooks which feed these comparatively small rivers are heavily polluted. There is one in my area which as children we called "Blacky Brook." Black Brook is, in fact, its title, and it deserves it. It is now culverted for much of its length, but this is a policy of respair. My fear is that the condition of these rivers is not generally realised and that their improvement will not get priority because they are not used for drinking water. Indeed, when I tell people in my area that some major rivers provide the water supply they think that I am joking.

I am full of admiration for the various anti-pollution and conservation societies which are making such an impact on public opinion in this field. But there are times when I am reminded of the kind of mother who fusses because her child has got his hands dirty by a muddy pool and does not notice that someone else's child has fallen in.

Let us face the fact that what most parts of the country fear could happen to their rivers if the worst came to the worst has already happened in South-East Lancashire, and indeed in the tidal waters of the Mersey. Last week, we know, the Minister visited the Mersey estuary and part of the Mersey itself, and he will have been shocked by what he saw. I urge him to continue his journey further up the river, because the pollution in the higher reaches is even worse than is it in the Mersey itself. It is not conservation that is needed here but radical change.

Who and what is responsible for the appalling condition of these rivers? First, it is industry. The rivers take in bleach waste from cotton mills and fibre waste from paper mills. This is particularly bad, because it sinks to the river bed, using up oxygen. Oil and chemical waste creates not only pollution but fire 1222 danger. There is thermal pollution from the power stations, steel scale and gas liquid from the steel works, effluent from tar distilleries, dye wastes, even slight lead pollution. Industry uses a vast amount of water in these processes. Paper mills I understand use about 60,000 gallons for each ton of paper produced and breweries use 44 gallons of water for each pint of beer they produce.

To solve the problem, industry must come clean. This is a problem of cash. But surely part of the cost of goods should include adequate provision for the prevention of pollution. The Government could help by giving adequate grants for firms to install anti-pollution equipment and they could help, I think, particularly where firms and local authorities combine for treatment projects.

The other major factor is the quality of the local authorities' sewage disposal works. These local authorities face a difficult and expensive task. The river authority hesitates to prosecute firms and would find it even more difficult to prosecute other public bodies such as local councils. Do the councils in this area get sufficient help from the rate support grant? Do they get enough encouragement from central Government to push on with the necessary schemes? Do they get pressure from central Government to carry on with essential schemes?

We have to stop talking about the battle against pollution in general terms and get down to the sordid details of cleaning up these rivers. Our Lancashire rivers were ruined by the nineteenth century industrialists' slogan, Where there's muck, there's brass. Looking at some of the more pleasant rivers in this country and the need for spending on the unpleasant rivers, I can only say, "Where there's brass, there's no muck." I make a plea for special consideration for the rivers of this area.

South-East Lancashire faces the difficulties of a vast industrial area trying to get rid of the worst legacies of the industrial revolution which it led. An urgent requirement in this task of making it a better place in which to live is the rapid improvement of its rivers.

Since applying for the debate I have received letters and essays from pupils in two schools in my constituency—the 1223 Two Trees Secondary School and the Corrie Junior School. They show a welcome awareness of the need for action in cleaning up the rivers. They point out, too, that if a river is bad anyway, local people tend not to care and to dump rubbish—old prams and bicycles, and even motor cars. The children rightly see the need for individual as well as Government effort.

I can best conclude by quoting the end of a letter from 11-year old Lesley Melbourne of Corrie Junior School, who lives near the river Tame. She wrote : The walk through Denton Woods used to be lovely, but now it is spoilt by the smell of the river. You can't even smell the wild flowers. Can't someone do something about it?".

§ The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths)

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Marks) has most eloquently expressed, I am sure, the feelings of many of his constituents about the need to clean up the rivers of South-East Lancashire. I agree with him that it is a task which the whole country wishes to see joined in that area.

In reply to his measured and eloquent speech, may I at the outset say a few words about my recent visit to Mersey-side? I think that I may appropriately do that, for most of the rivers of South-East Lancashire end in the Mersey Estuary. Here, as in his area, too, the main pollution comes from industry, from petrol refining and soap and detergent manufacture, chemical and allied industries and food processing, for example. I quite accept that the Mersey Estuary is in a sorry state. I had the opportunity to see many of the industrial effluents from a helicopter and to visit many of the local authority sewerage works. There is a great deal to be done, and I am glad to say that local authorities, on the one hand, and industrialists, on the other, have agreed to join in a joint steering committee which will have the support of my Department in a major clean-up operation which I hope will return the main estuary of the Mersey to a clean condition by the early 1980s. Manifestly, if that is to be done, the upper reaches of the Mersey which pour over the Howley Weir into the estuary must be cleaned as well.

1224 At Howley Weir I had the opportunity of seeing the cumulative flow of all of the tributaries of the Mersey in the South-East Lancashire area, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that the condition of those rivers for the most part is not good. The modal flow of the Mersey, that is, the flow that most commonly occurs, at Howley Weir is over 300 million gallons a day. How polluted this can be may be judged by the fact that the discharges of sewage and trade effluents to the river and its tributaries upstream from this point are also calculated as being very little less than 300 million gallons per day.

The Mersey is made up of flows from the Irk, the Medlock, the Irwell, the Roch, the Croal and the Tame, and numerous less important tributaries. If these names were not by themselves enough to conjure up a picture of the industrial revolution, the names of some of the towns through which they flow would do so—Manchester, Salford, Rochdale, Bury, Bolton and Oldham. At this late hour I am very glad to see present my hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Mr. Haselhurst) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Laurance Reed). I knew these towns as a youth. They are the places that made this country great, the very foundations of our industrial strength.

Of course, industries will change. The position today is vastly different from the time when King Cotton and King Coal reigned supreme. But South-East Lancashire is still a vastly important industrial area, and even today it is not possible to have major industry without industrial effluents any more than it is possible to have dense populations without large quantities of sewage.

The hon. Member for Gorton, with his felicity for quotation, will no doubt recall one of the earlier descriptions of river pollution in Lancashire in Engels' "The Condition of the Working Class in England". There the Irk is described as … a narrow, coal-black, stinking river full of filth and rubbish which it deposits on the more low-lying right bank. In dry weather this bank presents the spectacle of a series of the most revolting blackish-green puddles of slime from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gases constantly rise and create a stench which is unbearable … 1225 That is how Engels found this river in the 1840's—well before the passing of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951. So river pollution is no new thing.

But there is the difference that in those days no one cared very much about it, and today everyone cares. We have become very much more sensitised to environmental pollution and more determined as a country to clean it up. Today's problems are different from those that Engels described. Cotton and coal still have a large part to play in South-East Lancashire and they still continue to impose pollution loads on the rivers. But the list of discharges to those rivers shows that it is the paper, textile, chemical and allied industries which today are the greater problem. Together, those industries are discharging some 13 million gallons of polluting effluents to the River Irwell daily, 4 million gallons to the Roch, 4½ million gallons to the Tame and 2 million gallons to the Croal.

Polluting discharges from industry, principally the iron and steel, detergent and food processing industries, total 40 million gallons per day to the Manchester Ship Canal. In addition, there is a further 85 million gallons of treated sewage effluent which, I am sorry to say, flows from overloaded sewage disposal works into the Manchester Ship Canal. Into the Tame, a river in which the hon. Member is specially interested, another six sewage disposal works pour each day a further 12 million gallons. So the size of the problem is very great and there is a much greater and more complex load to be dealt with.

Though I cannot promise the hon. Gentleman trout, I can tell him that the Mersey and Weaver River Authority in its latest annual report was able to report to us that a local angling society introduced fish into the lower reaches of the river Croal a year or two ago and the fish have survived the shock. I hope that the anglers have, too. Another local angling society has introduced fish into stretches of the River Irwell near Bury, and when the Rochdale Corporation completes a recently approved £3 million scheme for the reconstruction of its Roch Mill sewage disposal works fish are expected to return to that river, too, for the first time reported since 1835.

1226 These improvements represent a very substantial investment and a great deal of hard work to improve these rivers. I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is the Government's intention that these rivers shall be improved. For example, on the Croal, Bolton Corporation is spending about £100,000 a year reconstructing its sewerage system. On the Roch, the river is now reported to be clean above Little-borough, and when the recently approved scheme costing £3 million for the reconstruction of Rochdale Corporation's sewage disposal works and associated sewerage work is completed the river is expected to support fishlife.

On the Irk, the river is reported to have been improved this year, largely as a result of the abandonment of the Chad-derton sewage disposal works, as a result of Oldham Council's major reconstruction of its Slacks Valley sewage disposal works a year or two ago—incidentally, at a cost of nearly £½ million. Flows from Chadderton urban district were then transferred to this works and it was this that enabled the unsatisfactory Chadderton works to be abandoned. Oldham Council has further works in hand at an estimated cost of £300,000.

Another scheme I should mention is the reconstruction of Royton sewage disposal works which will take the flows from the Crompton Urban District Council's works which will be abandoned.

Meanwhile, on the Tame there has been a significant improvement in recent years. Saddleworth Urban District Council, which is in the West Riding, has work in hand at an estimated cost of close to £½ million for the extension of its sewage disposal works. Stalybridge and Dukin-field Joint Sewerage Board has recently had my Department's approval for a scheme for the reconstruction of its Bradley Hurst sewage disposal works at an estimated cost of £1½ million.

There are some signs of improvement on the Tame, but the hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the enormous amount of work still requiring to be done. I agree wholeheartedly with his reference to the work of the Tame Valley Improvement Scheme. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the need for individual effort as well as effort by government and industry. I commend, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would, the improvement scheme's suggestions to individuals to tidy 1227 messy property, to drop no litter, to help clean up canals, and to help clean up derelict sites. I am sure that ordinary people, young people in particular, are anxious and willing to help. These are some of the practical ways in which they can

As the hon. Gentleman has said, in the end this is a matter for government, whether central or local, and for industry working in collaboration with government. I am advised that as a result of the improvements now being undertaken or shortly to be put under way in the Upper Mersey above Howley Weir a 50 per cent. reduction in the pollution load reaching the Mersey below Howley Weir will result within the next five years. The hon. Gentleman will agree that this is substantial. Work to clean up the non-tidal Mersey and its tributaries will continue. Although, as I have said, there have been these impressive improvements, the Government are determined to see this movement accelerated and that is why, the national rate of investment over the past five years of works and sewage disposal being £400 million, the Secretary of State has now increased it in real terms over the next five years to £700 million. I can assure the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friends from that area that South-East Lancashire will get its full share. We are putting on the pressure. We are anxious to see these rivers cleaned up and I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said that in the end it is no use just talking about it ; it is a matter of getting down to the practical details in conjunction with the local authority and local industry.

I now want to deal with the three specific points that the hon. Gentleman was kind enough to write to me about before this debate. His first point was that the improvement of these rivers may not get the priority that is needed because they happen not to be used for drinking purposes. He is quite right in saying that one of the strongest reasons for cleaning up rivers is to fit them for reuse for public water supply purposes. This is a prime consideration in our allocation of capital investment. I can assure him that this is by no means the only consideration. There are, for instance, public health and amenity considerations 1228 as well, and the fact that about £2 million worth of sewage disposal works are now in hand in Saddleworth U.D.C., Stalybridge and Dukinfield shows that the Tame is getting its share of attention.

I take note of the hon. Gentleman's words tonight and I shall have inquiries made to see whether anything further can be done to assist him in his particular problem. I should add that the Weaver River Authority report says : The significant improvement in recent years in the quality of this river has been maintained. The hon. Gentleman's second point in his letter was that there is a need for considerable expenditure by Government and by local authorities, and he suggested that special grants might be made available. I accept that there is a need for considerable public expenditure, but I cannot accept that there is a need for special grants in one particular area. The local authorities already get the full benefit of rate support grant and that is a very substantial figure. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that wherever a well-worked-out and properly costed scheme is put to my Department it will get approval rapidly.

Neither do I think that there is a case made out for special grants to industry. I see that industry cannot suddenly be asked to change its ways. I accept that there must be carefully phased and costed programming in order that industrialists can make a shift to new methods of dealing with their effluent. But, after all, industry has had the benefit of a relatively cheap means of waste disposal for a long time and it would not be right to adopt a philosophy of paying a man to stop chucking his rubbish in one's garden. Therefore, I think it perfectly proper that, as the Secretary of State said, the polluter ought to pay, but we ought not to drop this whole load upon him without a proper programme for building up both, on the one hand, the local authority sewerage schemes and, on the other, the improvement of industrial effluent. Provided that the improvement in river conditions and the increased anti-pollution measures are carried out on a carefully worked out basis, there is good reason to believe that industry now accepts its responsibility to pay for cleaning up its 1229 effluents in cases where it discharges directly to the water courses.

The hon. Gentleman made the point that some of these rivers in South-East Lancashire are among the worst in the country—I would not dissent from that proposition—and he wanted particlular attention to be paid to the Tame Valley. Perhaps, one day, I shall have the opportunity of seeing the Tame valley with him. I can only assure the hon. Gentleman tonight that his advisory committee's leaflet, the one to which I have referred, has been studied in my Department, and we find it a most useful and encouraging document.

1230 Obviously, as the hon. Gentleman said it makes sense not simply to start producing green belts, putting in grass, trees and the rest ; one has to clean up the river at the same time. I give the assurance that it is the Government's intention to clean up all the rivers of this country. It will take a long time. It will take a great deal of money. But the rivers of South-East Lancashire, I assure the hon. Gentleman, will be among those to which we give as much priority as we possibly can.