You can't tell me that this is not raw sewage.
Look at that.
That's foul.
I'm no one special,
I'm nobody who wants to be in this position, talking.
Stop sewage going into our rivers!
I don't want to draw attention to anything,
I'm one of those quiet people who likes the outdoors.
I used to be able to swim to the bottom
and look at the fish.
I can't even get past the surface now.
It's taken over my life.
I had to make a decision,
do you just let it float down the river like most people do?
And I turned around and thought no, I'm going to give it my all.
I'm dyslexic.
I've never read a book in my life,
but I know the difference between right and wrong.
School never taught me anything,
nature did.
Let me just ...
So I take people out kayaking and stuff
and then all my money goes on kit.
Some women like heels and handbags,
I buy test kits for volunteers.
Phosphate tester here,
then you've got your nitrates,
conductivity and water temperature.
Set a volunteer up, thats £150.
Probably spent about £6,500 in six months
and that's put my business into absolute –
I nearly went through,
about a week and a half ago I had £33 left in my business.
And it's just like I can't pay my bills what the hell am I going to do
and you're like no, keep going with the kit, keep going with that,
try and get loans to get your kit.
I won't go away.
I can't take on the world,
but I can take on what's on my doorstep.
On my doorstep is the wire in the earth.
This this is the kit that I bought in the last week.
Things have been going wrong for, I don't know, probably 30, 40 years
and now it's time that it's starting to show.
We have to speak out and we have to put ourselves on the line.
In order to take a sample of the turbid water,
I'm using a two litre milk container.
This is the (unclear) in the last 8 minutes.
Look at that.
The video I put up last week, I've had over 30,000 views
and I don't know anyone.
Let's go and find some shit.
Yeah.
This is what my life's come to.
So there's two pipes coming over there,
it is treated sewage, believe me you wouldn't want to drink this water.
It's not just saying, these massive companies are polluting our river.
So we've got like agriculture coming down that way.
It's a whole circle,
it's everybody taking responsibility.
This starts in our own home where we don't put wet wipes down a toilet,
we don't use chemicals.
It's the community coming together
of all different people that would have never connected.
We may be different in every other way,
but we've got something that connects the whole lot of us.
Yeah.
It's a genuine expression of that reclaiming the countryside
for the people who live in it and the ordinary people.
It's a real privilege for me to meet all these different types.
You bring them in and then you just gently get to know people.
Thanks very much.
Cheers.
See you.
I fell ill about seven or eight years ago now
and you know, my whole world really was transformed by that.
It had became more or less housebound.
This has come along,
I can go outside, I can do something that's constructive,
that gives me a reason to connect really to the natural world again
and to life again.
We used to go for family picnics when I was small
and you'd look into the water and you could see the chirp and the trout
just drifting quietly under the surface
and you could go in and swim and splash about.
All this life,
all this incredible little stories that were going on all around me.
To go to those same places now
and see that the bottom is covered with algae,
that it's harder to see the fish or no you don't see them at all,
you know, it's painful to see that.
Now this is a fabulous place to have a meeting like this, don't you reckon?
My goodness isn't it growing, people are angry,
we want change.
498 water samples only since September.
I take a sample downstream of the town, just above the sewage outlet.
Over 20 million chickens across the River Wye catchment –
There is a farm, you can't see from here, but it's up a hill.
I decided to test the water that was lying on the field down here,
just before it went under the fence, got a level of 26.
Astonishing.
We are on a cliff edge now.
Anybody who would like to come on board,
we've had 42 people that have trained, we need more.
Thank you for coming
If you wanted you know, any testing out there –
Oh great.
All the anglers want to help and thankfully they've brought us other people in,
which is ...
It feels to me like it's part of a much bigger movement,
it's almost a movement now really.
People are obviously keen to make links with us now,
instead of it being the other way around.
God bless your life.
Jesus loves you.
He loves you.
Jesus loves us.
Miss Jones obviously you've done a lot of very strong work in this area,
are Welsh rivers safe to swim in and to enjoy as a bather?
I've been asked that question many, many times
and I feel over 40 years being in and on the river,
in the last six years the huge decline it has been diabolical.
We've got a huge problem with poultry in the Wye,
that's absolutely decimating the whole ecosystem
and that hugely needs to be addressed, but also
we've got the likes of Welsh Water ...
Just pumping in and the evidence that I have
and I've collected over the years ...
It just shows the diabolical state, it really does.
OK, thank you.
Can I come back to you ...
Now the rains coming in as well.
Well ...
We're trying to build up a systematic database, so we've got to go out ...
Every week, if we can.
People like Welsh Water have certainly started to make real efforts
to change people's perceptions of what they're like.
So long as we keep them their name to that,
that'll translate into real shifts in their strategy.
It would be great if we had enough trust in the regulators
that we didn't have to be out here doing this ourselves,
but sadly we don't have that.
You realise, OK, that while you're alive you better go get on and do something,
whatever that something is.
Do the thing that means the most to you, do the thing that aligns with your values
while you can.
Oh, this is horrible.
This is when it gets really horrible.
My hands are so cold I can barely ...
This is a crazy life that I've come to.
You know what type of pollution you're seeing,
you know where every combined storm outlet is.
Whereas before you've seen the beauty,
but I do still go back into that innocence,
because, otherwise what I'm doing, like many campaigners,
would turn really like, bitter and I haven't got any part of bitterness in my body.
This is happening, shit happens, but when you address it
and you bring attention to it, you're moving forward.
That's why I like a river and not a canal or a lake,
I like the river because it's flowing
and it doesn't ask anything, all it asks is a bit of respect.