Campaigners including the naturalist Chris Packham and the comedian Paul Whitehouse have urged in an open letter to all party leaders have said that the next government must give Windermere greater protection from sewage pollution.
The campaign group, known as Save Windermere, says that the lake has huge ecological significance, is home to rare and protected species and brings in about £750m to the economy. But the signatories, who include the Wildlife Trust, the countryside charity the CPRE and WildFish, say it is being degraded by pollution.
Matt Staniek, the founder of Save Windermere, said that as party leaders prepare to publish their manifestos this week, greater protection for the lake was urgently needed to make sure it was looked after for future generations forever.
“This is not ideological, it’s non-contentious, and it is absolutely necessary to save Windermere whilst also setting an example for the treatment of our freshwater and our natural world on a national level,” he said in the letter.
The protections for the lake are contained in the EU-derived water framework directive, but Staniek said the system failed to address the ecological, cultural and economic stability of the lake and the surrounding area despite its national significance.
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The letter says: “We urge you to commit with haste to granting greater environmental protection for England’s largest lake. The mechanism used to achieve this must have legal underpinning, whilst current legislation must also be enforced. Success will be defined as the long-term recovery of the lake, with it returning to, or as close as possible to, its natural oligotrophic state.”
Last month it emerged that millions of litres of raw sewage had been illegally pumped into Windermere in February, and that United Utilities had failed to stop the pollution of it for 10 hours. It did not report the incident to the Environment Agency until 13 hours after it started.
Suspected illegal sewage dumping into the lake also took place more than 70 times in 2022, according to analysis by the academic Prof Peter Hammond, and in June that year a serious pollution incident in a beck feeding the lake left hundreds of fish dead.
The letter says Windermere has been victim to decades of pollution and exploitation resulting from inadequate investment and substandard regulation, leaving the lake unadaptable to our changing climate.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
