Welcome to your Get River Positive newsletter
Rivers matter. They are the lifeblood of the places where many of us live, work and play. And it’s only right that we should play a leading part in protecting them. We’ve made a clear promise to you that our storm overflow operations will not be the cause for rivers not achieving good ecological status, and we’ve set out our plans to get there. That’s why I'm pleased to share our latest Get River Positive newsletter with you, and, our second Get River Positive Annual Report.
The work we’re doing is making a difference, so much so we’re confident of securing the Environment Agency’s highest four-star rating for Environmental Performance for an unprecedented fifth year later in 2024, as we continue to make a positive difference to the environment - whether through delivering bold Get River Positive pledges, improving the biodiversity of 10,000 hectares of land, or launching a net zero hub at a wastewater treatment site in Staffordshire.
In this edition, we will explore the significant investment we’re making, share news about our new interactive map and give you an insight to our latest Advisory Panel meeting.
Thanks for reading!
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Sharing progress on our commitments made to you
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We’re pleased to share our second progress report on our commitments made to you through Get River Positive. Our 2024 Annual Report looks back on the immense work teams from across Severn Trent have been involved in to improve river health during the last 12 months.
From completing our roll out of monitors on every one of our 2,472 Storm Overflows enabling us to build action plans for future investment; to our important work supporting other sectors such as farmers through our ‘STEPS’ programme, which helps reduce their impact on rivers too - it has been a year with plenty of great work to look back on, while being more determined than ever to do all we can to improve on our own performance.
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Take a look at our new storm overflow map!
Being open and transparent about our performance and our plans is our fifth Get River Positive pledge.
So, we’re pleased to have now hit the ‘go live’ button on our storm overflow map.
It is further evidence of how seriously we take the subject of river health, as well as our Get River Positive commitments – showing how we’re going further and faster to reduce spills, and work towards our goal that by 2030, our storm overflows will cause no harm to rivers.
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Storm Overflow Map
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Severn Trent to invest £4.4 billion on its storm overflows
We’ve announced a huge £4.4 billion 25-year storm overflow investment plan as part of our plans to reduce spill numbers and deliver significant improvements in the region’s water and sewerage system.
Every one of our storm overflows will undergo investment – each with its own individual action plan - with a variety of improvements ranging from increasing the capacity of storage tanks to introducing green nature-based solutions.
The improvements form part of our Storm Overflow Action Plan (SOAP), which will reduce the number of spills into watercourses across our region, ensuring that by 2040 no overflow will spill more than 10 times in an average year in high priority areas, and in all areas by 2045, five years ahead of Government targets.
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Read more about our investments
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Ben Seal from Paddle UK joins the Get River Positive Advisory Panel
Our Advisory Panel, which helps to oversee progress against our Get River Positive commitments met for the first time this year at our head office in Coventry. As well as current members returning for the second year as panellists, we’re delighted to welcome Paddle UK’s Head of Access and Environment, Ben Seal, to the panel.
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The panel plays a crucial role to ensure we maximise potential for our performance and during the day we focused on increasing knowledge on our plans and progress, and shared updates on our 2025-2030 business plan submission, investment plans for storm overflows and citizen science. The group also shared what river health meant to them and their organisations. By all accounts it was an insightful day and the feedback from the panel helps us to think differently and always ensure we are striving to reach our goal of helping keeping our rivers as healthy as they can be.
We look forward to our next sessions including additional deep dives into a number of key topics of interest impacting river health, with the next full panel meeting happening in July.
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Regards,
Liv Garfield
Follow us on social media for more updates on Get River Positive and look out for our next quarterly newsletter in September.
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