Leeds waterways: The quiet revolution

MIKE Marshall has dedicated the last 32 years of his life to caring for Leeds’s waterways.

As maintenance manager with the Canal and River Trust, he has seen the region’s water network transformed from a source of embarrassment to a source of pride. The boom in the city’s riverside developments – and the image of affluence they now evoke – are just one sign of this change. And now the new homes that replaced rotting bankside warehouses don’t have to overlook the dirty waters which for so long cast a murky shadow over the city’s proud industrial past.

Mike and his team believe that now – 30 years after the Eye on the Aire campaign galvanised a revolution in the city’s river quality and frontage – it’s time to really start shouting about the quality of the city’s waterways. He is also calling on the community to play a part in the healthy future of local rivers and canals.

“Our job is really as custodians, to look after what we have here, and enhance what we can,” says Mike. “It’s been my life, I’d like people to enjoy the waterways, to come and appreciate them – and take care of them.”

Mike revels in his job, which includes making sure that the canal locks are operational, replacing lock gates, keeping boats moving if there are breakdowns, and maintaining water levels.

“I have seen the waterways decline and develop,” he says.“Some of theses structures are 200-years-old. When you think about how they were constructed – with the tools they had back then – it’s unbelievable what they did. They didn’t make much profit out of it because the railways came along. But it’s important that we remember the industrial past. The regeneration that has taken place has tried to reflect that.

“We are enjoying all this as a leisure facility now because of what they put into the waterways as a transport network.”

In Yorkshire alone, the Canal and River Trust – previously British Waterways – looks after 240 locks, 737 bridges, 371 listed buildings along waterways, three tunnels, 46 aqueducts and 100 weirs. It spends up to £4m a year on direct maintenance in the North East waterway unit, which covers most of Yorkshire, and about 300km of canal and river stretches.

Its duties include waterway maintenance, customer operations, major works and dredging. Dealing with flytipping alone costs about £80,000 a year in the region, and Mike admits this remains a frustrating issue.

“It costs us a lot of money and time and [littering generally] is one of our biggest expenses,” he says. “You can see all sorts of things, bikes, tyres, fridges. We do work closely with environmental protection officers to try and catch culprits where we can. It tends to be more in the urban areas, especially where you have lots of residential areas adjacent to the network.

“We try to encourage local communities to adopt the canals and the rivers, to take more interest and take some pride in them themselves. That tends to reduce the amount of litter on the network and things have improved in the last couple of years.”

Recent successful anti-flytipping work in Kirkstall has included installation of bollards around a car park which was a cut through for tippers, a clean-up of undergrowth around the river bank and ongoing monitoring has seen dumping levels plummet.

The Canal and River Trust has a 15-year contract with the Government and receives the bulk of its funding from Whitehall, but it also relies heavily on fundraising and volunteering. It is one of a group of four major organisations making up the Aire Action Leeds network, along with Leeds City Council, the Environment Agency and Yorkshire Water,

In recent years, this coalition has seen about £125m pumped into improving river water quality in the Leeds area, working towards EU water directives.

The Environment Agency says its £75m investment at the Esholt sewage works has “dramatically improved the quality of the water flowing through Leeds on the River Aire,” and a £40m investment at the Knostrop works has also improved water quality.

A further £10m has been invested in storage tanks in the Meanwood area to prevent sewers flooding during heavy storms. Salmon and sea trout are now regularly seen in the River Aire in Leeds for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.

Stan Jeffreys, president of the Leeds and District Amalgamated Society of Anglers, says he has seen a total transformation of the River Aire in Leeds. But the job is not finished. Stan, 65, was one of the key campaigners for the River Aire at Leeds being restocked with barbel – a fish whose presence indicates water cleanliness.

“As an angler, I always said that when Mrs Thatcher closed the factories along the River Aire she did us a favour,” he says.“It was totally and grossly polluted. The river in Leeds could not support fish life, and it got worse the further down the river you went.

“Then, the Environment Agency, because of EU laws, had to clean the water that came out of the sewage stations. They did it because they had to do it due to the new laws.”

However, Stan says some stretches along the River Wharfe are still “really suffering from lack of water quality” and at some popular angling spots, fish “just vanished”.

He and his angling colleagues are now pushing the Environment Agency to investigate. “The River Aire is one of the success stories of a revitalised river, all the way down to Chapel Haddlesey from Leeds, around 20 miles,” he says.

The Environment Agency is in charge of improving all of the waterways around Leeds to “good” standard by 2027 in order to meet EU standards. Four of the 26 Leeds waterways already comply, and 18 are almost there.

Although improvement work is ongoing, Britain’s rivers are at their healthiest for more than 20 years says the Environment Agency, which looks after 11 miles of the River Aire through Leeds and a host of tributaries in the area. The agency is working with Leeds City Council to fund a flood protection scheme in Lower Wortley and has also just finished a £500,000 flood reduction scheme on Wyke Beck in east Leeds, an area which has been flooded three times since 2004.

Rachel Kipling, Aire Action Leeds project officer, says waterway cleanliness remains a vital contributor to the city’s wider success.

“The state of the river has changed a lot over the last 20 or 30 years,” she says. “We should definitely be proud of our waterways around Leeds.

“There has been a huge improvement and change. A lot of credit goes to groups like Eye on the Aire for challenging water quality, working with regulators and really pushing for the change in water quality. That then brings back the wildlife, the people and the animation, and that goes hand in hand with the regeneration that is happening now.

“It is a lovely thing to see a heron or a kingfisher in the city centre. It was a combination of industry and pollution from different sectors back in the 1980s which led to our terrible water quality. The important thing for Leeds now is to highlight this hidden gem and really start to shout about it.”

The improvement in Leeds’s waterways would not have been possible without the contribution of campaigning groups, volunteers and public goodwill. The role of campaigners in forcing anti-pollution action by government and local authorities is widely acknowledged, but the goodwill of ordinary people remains vital.

In the past year alone, more than 3,500 volunteer days and regular towpath tidy events have dealt with perennial issues like graffiti and littering.

“There is a huge amount of public goodwill out there for the waterways,” says Simon Henry of the Canal and River Trust. “Millions of people use them regularly for cycling and walking and little commuting spots. So it’s about tapping into that and getting local communities more involved.”

The waterways in numbers

About £125m has been spent on water cleanliness around Leeds in recent years

It costs about £80,000 a year to deal with flytipping and littering of the water

Four of the 26 Leeds waterways under the Environment Agency’s remit meet the “good” water standard set by the EU and 18 are “nearly there”. All must reach the “good” standard by 2027 to meet the EU’s Water Framework Directive.

50 per cent of the population of the UK lives within five miles of an official waterway.

There are between 3,500 and 4,000 licenced boats on the Yorkshire network.

About 3,500 volunteer days were held on the Leeds waterways in the past year, saving £200,000.