Over a hundred people took part in a protest against increasing water pollution on the Cam on Saturday (17/05). The protest formed part of a larger demonstration against Anglian Water across the East of England.

The simultaneous demonstrations across the country were organised by Surfers Against Sewage. The Cambridge protest was through a collaboration between Cam Valley Forum, Cambridge Canoe Club, and the charity Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination. The group gathered for a rally at Mill Pond before rowing to King’s College Backs, according to Cambridge Independent.

Protesters held up signs from punts, small dinghies, and paddle boards along the course of the Cam. The group also sang a song composed by Rowena Whitehead called ‘Anglian Water: Clean It Up’.

Anne Miller, co-chair of Cam Valley Forum, said: “Water companies, and Anglian Water is no exception, are continuing to dump untreated and minimally treated sewage straight into our waterways, polluting our rivers and seas, putting human health at risk and destroying vital ecosystems that support life on earth.”

The River Cam has a history of causing outbreaks of Leptospirosis, or Weil’s disease, with rowers being particularly at risk. In 2022, Varsity reported that college nurses had warned students to stop swimming in the Cam after an outbreak of the disease.

A section of the Cam by Sheep’s Green was last May labelled one of the UK’s 451 “designated bathing waters,” however its water quality was most recently found to be “poor”.

Miller added: “Here in Cambridge, we, Cam Valley Forum, had to jump through the hoops to get Bathing Water Designation [for Sheep’s Green] because that was the only way to get the regulators to both permit, and require, Anglian Water to invest and improve the upstream sewage treatment. They tell us we should now see a significant improvement, but it’s going to take five years…That feels like a long time to wait, for something we should have had already.”

In their Pollution Incident Reduction Plan 2023-2025, Anglian Water apologised for not acting on water pollution concerns quickly enough.

Between them, water companies Anglian Water and Thames Water are facing more than 50 criminal investigations over sewage dumping.

An Anglian Water external spokesperson stated that recent spills are “largely reflective of the extreme weather and persistent flooding we saw across our region in the first part of 2024, which accounted for nearly 50% of our spills”.

They continued: “We know our assets need to be resilient to changing weather patterns. We also understand the strength of feeling around storm spills, and having apologised, we have promised transformational action – because we know our climate is going to keep changing, so we have to find better ways of dealing with extreme rainfall.”

“Our next five-year business plan builds at pace on the work we’ve already started. It contains our largest ever investment – £1bn – into tackling storm spills, and £11 billion overall to improve our performance,” they added.