Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night?
People so busy, make me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright.

Ray Davies – Waterloo Sunset

The Thames now is a whole lot cleaner than when Ray Davies wrote about gazing out over the ‘dirty old river’ in 1967.  Just over half a century ago the waters at Tower Bridge were declared ‘biologically dead‘ whereas now the river boasts 400 species of invertebrate, 125 varirties of fish and sightings of seals and porpoises in its lower reaches are increasingly common.

But, as a nation, we still have a long way to go: the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) predicts Britain is unlikely to reach 2027’s EU targets for reducing river pollution. Dr Andrew Singer, senior scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology insisted last year that ‘there is no river in the UK that is safe to be swimming in’.

There are more than 18,000 sewer overflows across England and Wales ― and about 90% of them discharge raw sewage directly into rivers, according to the WWF:

Overflows are supposed to occur only during extreme rainfall to prevent sewage backing up into homes, but in 2017 the charity found 8-14% of overflows spilling sewage into rivers at least once a week, and between a third and a half at least once a month.

There is a logic, by the way, to illustrating the quote from Ray Davies’s lyrics with a picture of the Mersey. In a 2010 interview with the Liverpool Echo Davies, late of North London, revealed that he loved Liverpool, that his whole career had been inspired by Merseybeat and that the song had originally been called Liverpool Sunset.

Picture of the River Mersey from Rock Ferry ©Bobby Seal