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The 1999 ammonia pollution incident on the river Wey in Hampshire

In March 1999 a former ice cream factory in Alton, Hampshire was decommissioned.  Contractors bubbled waste ammonia into a water bath, which overflowed into a storm drain and thence into the Cacer stream which flows in the river Wey, a tributary of the Thames.  A 13-mile stretch around Bentley was seriously polluted and an estimated 6000 fish, mostly trout, were killed.  The responsible firm, Preston Engineering, was eventually fined £12,000, and the poet Wendy Cope wrote the following;

Elegy for the Northern Wey

(Polluted by an ammonia spillage, March 1999)

This is the moment;

March sunshine, trees almost bare,

Everything stirring.

The birds know it too –

So loud, so full of themselves

This blissful morning

White clouds. Tree shadows,

The river. How clear it is,

how busy with life.

This is the moment

We can never get back to.

Look a little frog.

By Wendy Cope

iGreen comment

Hang about!   “… the moment we can never get back to.”  

The river recovered.  I’ve just searched (Dec. 2002) all the river Wey angling clubs that have a website, and none even mention the incident. 

Things are even better than that.  The rate of category one incidents (the most serious) recorded by the environment agency (EA) in 1999 was the lowest since records began.  The rate rose slightly in 2001 but the EA records that the “long-term trend still shows a steady decrease following a huge drop in incidents between 1994 and 1995”.    

Two messages.  Sure pollution is bad, but rivers recover, and the rate of serious pollution is falling not increasing.   

The important thing is for the EA to chase up such incidents and prosecute those responsible.  So long as they are private companies, which have to take responsibility for their actions, and to pay their fines out of their profits, they will take notice.  Cheer up Wendy.

Jim Thornton, Nottingham, 2 Jan 2003

 Click here for more poems from Wendy Cope

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Last modified: September 10, 2006