For some time environmental campaigners have contested that the River Wye and its tributaries have been contaminated by pollution from rapidly expanding intensive poultry farming.

Natural Resources Wales, the regulatory body, has consistently rejected this link.

In a recent judicial review of Powys CC’s decision to allow yet greater expansion of poultry farms, the court decided that planners were entitled to trust the view of the Regulatory Regime, NRW

In October a document came to light, its publication being legally obliged by the Habitats Directive.

In it the “Wye Core Management Plan” notes eight locations where pollution from agriculture is identified “partly due to the spreading of manure from intensive poultry units which are proliferating in the Ithon catchment”.

So who has produced this document? None other than Natural Resources Wales, the regulatory body.

It’s not just our rivers that need ‘cleaning up’.

Arvi. Amphibius (distant cousin of Rattus Rattus)