Tower and Town, October 2022 (view the full edition)Editorial: ARKMany of us take our rivers for granted, but hopefully if you live in or near to Marlborough, you'll have heard that you are lucky enough to live near an internationally rare chalk stream. There are 260 of these special chalk streams in the world and here in England we have 224 of them, including the Kennet and its tributaries. What makes them special is their cold, clean and clear water, which supports a wealth of native wildlife and sadly some invasive non-native species too! It was back in 1990 that a group of fishermen, concerned by the river's poor health decided to form an action group to bring pressure on bodies, including Thames Water and the Environment Agency. Jack Ainslie, Roger deVere, and friends formed Action for the River Kennet (ARK). Their main focus was the abstraction on the Kennet and the impact this was having on the wildlife, including fish. Abstraction is the extracting of water from the chalk aquifer. The chalk aquifer is the underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock. Chalk streams rely on plenty of winter rain to filter down into the aquifer, which acts like a giant sponge. When the aquifer is saturated the water feeds into the river from the source and natural springs along its path. The water that comes out of your taps has been extracted by the water company from the aquifer. So, valuing water is paramount. The less we can all use, the more that can reach our rivers and keep them flowing. This is a particularly timely message, given we are in drought. It is though something we should be thinking about and acting on long-term. Since those early years ARK has become a registered charity and is now a Rivers Trust hosting both the Kennet Catchment and more recently taking on the Pang Catchment. We are still firmly based and very active in Marlborough, but are also busy downstream too, carrying out a range of projects at a breadth of scales and this includes working on the tributaries. To make bigger impacts today's thinking is very much at a catchment scale, so you'll see us not only working in the river but by it and sometimes quite far away from it too. In this edition of Tower and Town you'll hopefully discover more about your local river, learn how you can help it, find out more about ARK and the opportunities to join in. Anna Forbes, Editor and ARK Senior Project Officer
Anna Forbes |
For more information do visit our website www.riverkennet.org