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Councillors have offered their support to a bid to create a designated bathing area in the Cam in Cambridge to get “rancid filth out of the river” – and campaigners are helpful that could unlock £5million of investment.
Cambridge City Council has agreed to support Cam Valley Forum’s application to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for designation of an area at Sheep’s Green.
But some councillors voiced concerns that the move could give people the “false impression of safety” to swim in the river.
A report presented to the council’s environment and community scrutiny committee on Thursday (October 5), said a consultation by the Cam Valley Forum voluntary group indicated there was a large number of people already swimming in the river who were being exposed to the “significant health risks”.
The report explained that if the water at Sheep’s Green becomes a designated bathing area, the water quality would have to be monitored and information about the results and pollution displayed.
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Council officers said the designation would be a “positive starting point towards a longer-term solution around water quality”.
But Cllr Elliot Tong (Green, Abbey) was not in favour.
He said: “I think it is a pretty bad idea. Doing occasional tests for a few months a year has shown itself not to work very well in other places and it gives the false impression of safety, which could end up baiting someone that would not have gone swimming otherwise into swimming in the river.
“I know that people are swimming there anyway and we do want to make it safer for them. However, I do think that is more indicative of the fact that we have not communicated that the river is filled with rancid filth than anything else, and I don’t think this is a decision we should double down on by giving it our blessing as a good place to swim.”
Cllr Jean Glasberg (Green, Newnham) said Sheep’s Green was a nature reserve and said important concerns had been raised about the environmental impact of people swimming there.
She did not believe a designated bathing would address the wider issue and said Anglian Water should be funding the improvements to clean up the river anyway. Cllr Glasberg said the council could also put up water quality information without the designation.
Cllr Olaf Hauk (Lib Dem, Trumpington) felt the designation was a way the council could do something about the pollution in the Cam and said it would at least provide information to the people already swimming in the river about the water quality.
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Cllr Sam Carling (Lab, West Chesterton), the executive councillor for open spaces and city services, said he could assure people the city council would not be promoting the area as a place to swim.
But he wanted to get the “rancid filth out of the river” and said removing sewage from it would be good for both people and wildlife.
Cllr Carling explained that while only the designated area of the river would be tested, it would require issues upstream to be improved in order to clean up the water, which he argued would help the wider river.
He noted that the council could not make a private water company improve the water quality without getting the designation.
Cam Valley Forum could not apply without the council’s letter of support.
A majority of the committee councillors voted in favour of supporting the Cam Valley Forum in its application for a designated bathing water.
Afterwards, Anne Miller, who is leading Cam Valley Forum’s work on the project, said: “I’m so pleased, and grateful for the hard work of everyone who has helped, since Jean Perraton and Michael Goodhart started working towards bathing water designation back in 2020.
“We are very hopeful that Defra will approve our application, and that this will unlock at least £5million in much-needed investment from Anglian Water to help clean up the Cam.
“We know from the monitoring work over the last few years, that the ageing and overloaded sewage infrastructure in the Haslingfield area is a major source of the faecal pollution of the Cam. This is resulting in such poor water quality that swimmers at times get sick, and it contributes to the phosphate pollution that is so damaging to habitats and wildlife.
“The investigation and improvements won’t happen overnight, but we hope that within a few years, it will be much safer for people to swim in the Cam.”
The forum said the water quality is very likely to be found to be “poor”, which would help unlock the investment needed to help clean it up.
Anglian Water’s business plan, published on October 2, notes that if the Cam gets priority by becoming designated bathing water, it would budget around £5million to improve Haslingfield’s ageing and overloaded sewage infrastructure.
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