Project Dates: 03.06.2024 to 09.06.2025

Supporting the grassroots organisation, Friends of the Dart with their ambition to run a comprehensive, year-round bacterial and chemical testing programme at specifically identified sites along the River Dart.

Phase one of their water quality testing ran from May to December 2023 and involved collecting weekly water samples at several sites along the Dart, analysed for Ecoli, Enterrcocci and Total Coliforms.

Our grant will help them to implement phase two during 2024, increasing the range of bacterial and chemicals tested, and the number of testing sites – extending to 13 sites between the river source and sea at Dartmouth.

The testing programme will result in high quality accurate data that informs the local community, this in turn creates accountability and transparency adding weight and rigour to influencing investment in the updating of sewage infrastructure to prevent spillages – to stop the decline of the river’s health and enhance water quality – for the sake of the river’s ecology and the health of the communities around it.

Friends of the Dart are engaged with South West Water, working towards establishing a legally binding agreement outlining commitments to infrastructure updates that resolve combined sewage overflow spills in an expedient timescale, creating a model that enables data transparency and sharing, and a framework to allow other river communities to benefit from the groundwork that has been done.

The Friends of the Dart blueprint will offer a structured, collaborative and forward thinking approach for other community groups to follow in their endeavours to restore the health of their own local waterways.

Additional project objectives include: exploring how restorative aquaculture practices (such as growing mussels or oysters) could return to the Dart, whether for their ecosystem services and/or commercial opportunities; and engaging young people by holding community talks and events and demonstrating how to carry out gold standard water testing to promote long term change to the health of our rivers and communities.

IMPACT SUMMARY JUNE 2025

Project Activities:

• Friends of the Dart have developed scheduled updates for 16 infrastructure sites and the addition of upgraded storage capacity and a UV filter at Kilbury treatment works following the project findings.
• Investigated illegal dry spills and widely highlighted the issue.
• Gaining designated bathing sites has resulted in a formal investigation of Steamer quay location.
• Delivered an online event to share findings of phase 2 testing, attended by councillors, journalists, organisational representatives and individuals from our River communities.
• Are now conducting regular sampling at 31 sites across the Dart catchment, monitoring both wet and dry conditions each month. This expanded network — combined with the previous three years of data and additional data from other sources — is giving a much clearer picture of how pollution behaves in different weather conditions and how individual tributaries contribute to the overall bacterial load in the River Dart, helping hone in on problem sites.
• To validate the use of Petrifilms, Friends of the Dart conducted a study comparing E. coli concentrations from Petrifilm assays with those from an accredited laboratory, and continue to run quarterly laboratory tests to confirm the reliability of our method.
• Friends of the Dart have progressed a framework for change, and been instrumental in mentoring others to set up River advocacy groups and establish their own water quality testing programme, with Friends of the Teign being an excellent example of this.
• Friends of the Dart have established a system for transparency in partnership with South Hams district council, and have taken it to a national audience of policy makers, environmental change makers and River groups at the Rivers Summit in London.
• Through community engagement, Friends of the Dart have been able to identify a need for information sharing and community engagement that empowers individuals and businesses to make a considerable positive contribution through small manageable actions.
• Friends of the Dart have developed a partnership with York university and Watershed Investigations to test a range of pharmaceutical, chemical, forever chemicals at four bathing sites to understand and communicate the impact of these on human and animal health.

 

Project Impact:

• Encouraging governments, public institutions and media to act in ways that support the natural world, thus having a positive impact on pollution levels not only in the Dart, but across the South West and nationally.
• Encouraging changes in public/consumer behaviour to better preserve, protect, and regenerate the natural world through giving people accurate data on local river pollution levels.
• By informing individuals and groups, Friends of the Dart are empowering them with accurate information. This has given people the confidence to engage with positive action and invest in advocating for the natural environment, through change economic norms and incentives to shift to more environmentally sustainable production and consumption patterns.
• The project has improved the water quality in the Dart and therefore made its waters a better environment for not just people to swim, but biodiversity to live.