Rivers cleaner than they have been for 200 years

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Leading article: One step forward in the fight to protect our planet

Rivers and estuaries in England and Wales are probably cleaner now than at any time since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the Environment Agency said yesterday. And, as if to prove it, the first salmon in 130 years were caught in the Mersey.

While the agency's figures were being disclosed in London, three cock salmon, the largest 3ft long and nearly 15lb, were caught in a fish-trap at a weir near Warrington, between Liverpool and Manchester. Agency staff weighed and measured them, then released them back into a river that 15 years ago was regarded as one of the most industrialised and polluted watercourses in Europe. The last salmon were caught in the Mersey in 1870.

The agency's river-water quality figures showed the record level of cleanliness achieved last year had been maintained and in some cases surpassed. In England and Wales, 94 per cent of rivers – about 24,000 miles in total – attained "good" or "fair" water quality last year, as opposed to between 91 and 92 per cent in 1999. "Fair" would typically mean a river can support coarse fish and its water can be abstracted for drinking; "good" means it could even support trout, which need a higher level of cleanliness and dissolved oxygen in the water. Only 5 per cent were rated "poor" and 1 per cent rated "bad", which mean the rivers are unlikelyto contain any life.

Across Britain, about 95 per cent of rivers are now thought be in the good/fair category, the same as the figure last year, which was a record. (A precise figure cannot be given because river-water quality in Scotland is measured in a slightly different way.) Since water privatisation in 1989, £30bn has been spent by the commercial companies on improving sewage treatment (paid by water consumers through considerably higher bills).

In 1990 the proportion of rivers rating good/fair was 85 per cent, and estuaries in the good/fair category were 90 per cent, compared with 96 per cent last year. The majority of high-quality rivers are in Wales and the West Country, with the greatest proportion of poorer streams in the North-west, where 16 per cent fall into the poor/bad category, which makes the return of the salmon to the Mersey even more remarkable.

The agency selected 452 river sites regularly visited by the public for grading, which covered presence of litter and other refuse on banks and in the river, colour and smell of the water, presence of oil, scum, foam and dog-fouling. Two-thirds of the surveyed sites were graded of good or fair aesthetic quality, with the remainder describes as poor or bad, although water quality in many cases was good.

"The billions being invested in cleaning up our rivers are bearing fruit, and the overall quality of river water has improved dramatically in the past 10 years," said Sir John Harman, the Environment Agency chairman. "Otters, salmon and an abundance of fish and birds have returned to waterways, including many in urban and industrial heartlands."

The Environment minister Michael Meacher said: "These are the best figures we have ever had across the UK. People don't come back from the dead, but rivers do."

The huge investment programme in improving and maintaining the Victorian sewerage system, on which £30bn has been spent in the past decade and a further £15bn by 2005, has been funded by the consumers. Water bills rose an estimated 35 per cent between 1990 and 2000, although they have fallen this year.

A severe problem is the system of combined sewers and storm-water overflows, which can release raw sewage into rivers in rainstorms. About 5,500 need improvement and about 4,500 are scheduled for works between now and 2005.