Extending rights of River Adur wins support from district councillors

At the Full Council meeting on July 20th, members debated a motion by Gabe Crisp (Green, St Nicholas Ward) and Julian Shinn (Green, St Nicolas) on whether granting Rights of the River to the Adur would be an issue worth pursuing by the council.

Ms Crisp stated: “The river defines our place, Adur is the name of our council, all of our wards are very close to the river itself – it runs through the heart of our communities, it should have a voice itself as a being.”

She said there are 90 Southern Water waste discharge points, and around 1200 points in total, along the river, and amongst damaging practices to the river, like new developments and illegal cockle picking, it needs extra protections.

These protections would follow the Universal Declaration of River Rights as follows: The right to flow; the right perform essential functions within the river’s ecosystem; the right to be free from pollution; the right to feed and be fed by sustainable aquifers; the right to native biodiversity; and the right to regeneration and restoration.

Every speaker in the debate agreed with the idea in principle, to further protect the River Adur from ecological harm, but exactly what wording they should use and how far new protections, and enforcement of those protections, should go was not agreed.

Julia Watts (Ind, Marine) said: “It’s quite difficult to designate a river as an entity, in order to have rights it needs to be an entity or a person – I wonder if the wording should be changed so that the river has an interest rather than a right – also you get to the point where, does a person’s right trump the river’s right?”

Andy McGregor (Con, Widewater) said many destructive practices were outlawed already, with enforcement and preventing sewage from things like houseboats at the mouth of the river being the main issue.

He said: “If there’s 40 houseboats, the amount of bacteria [flushed] into the river is the same as a city with proper sewage treatment that has 24 million people.”

The issue was recommended to the Joint Strategic Committee for consideration at their next meeting.