Over £10,000 has been raised in less than a week for a new Save Windermere campaign.
Water campaigner and conservationist Matt Staniek, 27, launched the new crowdfunding campaign last week and has already surpassed his fundraising target.
The conservationist has been campaigning for over a year for the body of water to be cleaned up, as he claims it is being polluted illegally by United Utilities and others. He wants action to be taken.
Throughout his campaign, Matt has paid for water samples and evidence collection out of his own pocket, which he said has now become unsustainable, leading him to launch the crowdfunder to secure the campaign into the future.
The new campaign aims to:
- Collect evidence of damage and illegality – including riverbed pollution, invertebrate deterioration and breaches of discharge permit(s)
- Force the regulator to act to stop United Utilities illegal sewage discharges.
- Force United Utilities – at its own expense and not the bill payers’ – to invest to provide the capacity in its sewage works.
- Force United Utilities to take ownership of all non main drains in the catchment as a result taking ownership of all 1,900 private discharge points
Matt has also launched a film detailing his findings and interviewing local people about water quality in the area with the help of filmmaking duo Gone Feral. He said the film aimed to make the campaign more accessible for a wider audience of people.
Matt said: “I’m now working with Wild Fish and Windrush Against Sewage Pollution that are enabling further data collections from across the catchment to show just how damaging these United Utilities water treatment assets are. We have recently found that the main river flowing into Windermere sees a 44 per cent reduction in invertebrates that live in the river below the Ambleside waste water treatment works.”
He claimed that the drop in invertebrates links to the illegal discharging of sewage in dry weather or when capacity had not been met at the treatment works, which Matt has said United Utilities is allegedly doing.
A United Utilities spokesman said: “We fully understand and share the passionate feelings about Windermere. That’s why we and like-minded local organisations have joined forces and formed Love Windermere, a partnership that’s determined to improve the water quality in the lake.
“Integral to that work is undertaking a detailed scientific study to really understand what nutrients and pollutants are currently in the lake and where they’re coming from. That will help all those in the local community that are having an impact to follow a coordinated plan of action to help improve Windermere. For United Utilities, that means building on the £40m of operational improvements we’ve already made and targeting our future investment where it’s most needed.”
Talking about the money raised for the campaign, Matt added: “We’ve now got £10,0000 in one week, which is absolutely insane. I’ve obviously had a lot of support from people in the past, but this feels different because everyone is feeling the extent of the economic crisis and everyone is thinking about how to keep their homes warm over winter.
“So for people to be donating to the cause, to me it just shows the significance of the science and evidence we’re putting forward and I can’t say how grateful I am. The more money raised the more we can do and the more evidence we have to take to a regulator to ask why they’re not prosecuting the water companies.
“It’s incredibly difficult going against these big companies and it’s very challenging, but at the end of the day, we’ve run out of time. We have reached this climate crisis and if we don’t act now, it will be too late for Windermere.”
A spokesman for Love Windermere, a group of organisations from across South Cumbria that have come together to tackle the challenges facing Windermere, said: “The Love Windermere partnership is co-ordinating the most comprehensive and stringently controlled monitoring programme ever seen at the lake to provide a science-based evidence baseline of the water quality.
“One of the UK’s largest citizen science projects, led by the Freshwater Biological Association and Lancaster University, has already evaluated data from 100 individual sample points this summer and another Big Windermere survey will take place on November 13. In addition, extensive year-long monitoring of the lake’s tributaries and of the main lake itself will provide full seasonal data to better inform and target where improvement action needs to be taken.
“The Love Windermere partnership is clear that sound scientific evidence is key to better understanding the many and complex factors affecting water quality at Windermere and in the surrounding catchment. We welcome the opportunity to share any data compiled by others to feed into the comprehensive and funded sampling and research programme that is already underway.”
Matt said the money raised from the crowdfunder will go towards evidence collection, film expenses, general running of the campaign and habitat restoration to improve water quality.
Additional money will go towards the creation of a Windermere ‘superhub’, which will sample invertebrate species, as well as levels of phosphate and blue-green algae. He also hopes to raise enough money to set up 24-hour water quality monitors and increase spot water sampling.
This Friday, Matt will attend a meeting with United Utilities to discuss Windermere’s current situation.
