Combe water quality investigation gets underway

In 2024, Combe sewage treatment works (STW) discharged untreated sewage into the River Evenlode for over 2430 hours, winning second place in our ‘Top of the Poops’ awards. This is why the Evenlode Catchment Partnership (ECP) has decided to run a targeted 6-month campaign, led by our partners at Earthwatch Europe, to investigate Combe STW.

The campaign kicked off with a community meeting on 10th July at Combe Hub. We gave a presentation to explain why and with which tools and methods we plan to monitor, focusing on the River Evenlode up and downstream of Combe STW. We also discussed how the community can get involved. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session filled with great questions.

This event was full of energy and we are truly excited to see what you can achieve as a community. You certainly have a voice, let’s see if the ECP can help amplify that! 📢

Missed this event? You can view the presentation here to find out more about the investigation. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Data collection volunteers

It is not too late to get involved. For anyone who is already trained with the FreshWater Watch kits and/or Riverfly, do let me know and we can add you onto our monitoring schedule.

If you’d like to help with further data collection then we could give you the opportunity to train using a few new methods including Hanna meters.

Sam and Laura are also looking to help with the YSI and Sondes probes! If you can offer any support then please get in touch.

Other help needed

As we delve deeper into this investigation, we are going to need community members to help with advocacy. We are also hoping to capture any stories or photos from the community and share what this beautiful stretch of river used to be like. If you have something to share or can provide us with any other evidence of what you have lost then please do get in touch.