A room full of people arrived at the Warwick Hall on Thursday afternoon for the WASP presentation for the Burford Festival. The Festival organisers had to move us to a bigger venue at the very nicely set up Warwick Hall, to fit in the audience in on a wet Thursday afternoon.
The Burford Festival was our first and very generous sponsor and some of what we presented in our talk was the fruit of that money, which we have used to buy our own water testing equipment.
Above. Professor Peter Hammond revealing evidence of some unreported sewage spills at Burford, discovered through his data analysis. Peter worked at the Big Data Institute in Oxford and is not overwhelmed by receiving tens of thousands of lines of data. I was! But his analysis turns it into a very clear and worrying story.
Senior Scientist at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Dr Andrew Singer talking about how antibiotics and other pollutants feature in the big picture. He was a guest speaker for the WASP event and what he said ought to concern everyone. There has been a lot in the news about the development of 'super bugs' resistant to antibiotics so it was fascinating to hear Andrew speak.
We will publish bite size stories from the WASP presentation over the coming weeks.
WASP founder, Ashley Smith giving the overview of how the whole thing just doesn't work for the community, and never will unless the cost benefit calculations start to value our health and quality of life and environment as worth spending money and eating into industry profits at the very least.
Hoping to see Thames Water become a leader in environmental rescue in the water industry, not a reluctant follower. Will 2019 be the year?
And a meeting with Jo Ruxton who made the film, A Plastic Ocean, about an issue which is so closely connected, as we treat our rivers as pollution highways sending so much plastic and other chemical pollution to the sea.
We had a lot of mail after the event, offering to help. along the river as well as the campaign as a whole.
We are still looking for more people to keep an eye on key sections of the river so please get in touch if you like the idea and want to know more. info@windrushwasp.org