Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to promote phosphate stripping technology as a means of reducing the levels of phosphate in the River Wye.

Tackling pollution, including phosphorous pollution, is a priority for this government, and we are working closely with the Welsh Government to ensure that this is effectively addressed in the Wye Valley.

On 30^th May the Secretary of State visited Hereford to discuss the River Wye at a roundtable with Hereford Council, the Welsh Government, local environmental groups and farming representatives. She agreed to consider how national policies and closer co-operation with the Welsh Government could better help local partners to restore the river.

The Government’s Plan for Water sets out a range of support to farmers, including those in the Wye, to help them transition to more sustainable agriculture and reduce their pollution. This support includes more than doubling the money for slurry infrastructure to £34 million nationally through our grant scheme to help prevent unnecessary spreading, of which £1.2m has been allocated to farms in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. We intend to adapt the grant offer over time to ensure that any public funding for better manure management supports adoption of storage, processing, and application of manures to aid their responsible management. The offer will also look to promote uptake of innovative treatments that can produce fertilisers from organic materials (including phosphate stripping technology) and circular use of slurry, such as fugitive gas capture for energy and fuel. In addition, our farming schemes are paying farmers for actions that protect our rivers and reduce run off, helping strengthen their role as stewards of the British countryside and rewarding them for work to look after our environment now, and in the long-term.

The Environment Agency (EA) is prioritising actions in the River Wye catchment. Around 70% of the excess phosphate comes from agricultural sources and one of the EA’s major focuses has been helping farmers better understand their impacts. We are funding extra Environment Agency (EA) inspectors to visit farms with 80 new officers in place and a significant increase in annual inspections in England to 4,000. The EA has prioritised this funding to focus on high-risk catchments including the Wye.

We have doubled the funding for the Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) advice programme. This helps farmers reduce water and air pollution through free one to one advice. Approximately fifty per cent of Natural England (NE)’s CSF resource is targeted in the Wye, giving advice to farmers about appropriate manure management and steps to reduce diffuse pollution through options like Countryside Stewardship (CS) Mid-tier.

The EA and NE also work in partnership with other partners across the entire Wye catchment. This includes working with communities through a Citizen Science programme, with Avara foods, and others in the food supply chain to find more opportunities for nutrient reduction, and with Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Dwr Cymru Welsh Water are already investing in a number of wastewater treatment works in the Wye catchment to reduce nutrient loads in wastewater by 2025. This includes work to add phosphate strippers and integrated wetlands to wastewater treatment works to reduce the levels of phosphorus in wastewater.

Welsh Government guidance to local authorities is a devolved matter for the Welsh Government, but statutory agencies and other organisations are part of a Nutrient Management Board (NMB) that come together to provide oversight and direction to all involved to drive actions to improve water quality in the Wye catchment. Such oversight is critical given the complexity of the issues and how they are all interlink. NE, EA and NRW and other partners are also part of five technical advisory groups for the Wye covering evidence, farm advice, regulation, poultry, and projects and innovation.