Stop Ure Pollution (SUP) is celebrating being awarded almost £20,000 by The National Lottery Community Fund which will enable it to carry out more detailed and extensive testing of the River Ure and its tributaries.
The National Lottery Community Fund seeks to support local action to improve and protect the environment which is in accord with SUP’s aims to work with citizen scientist volunteers to protect the River Ure and its tributaries for recreation and wildlife. Water testing by volunteers has already highlighted the impact of pollution from sewage and run-off from farms along the river.
Since its inception in June 2024 one of SUP’s key objectives has been to purchase the Fluidion system of monitoring E.coli that was successfully used to protect swimmers taking part in events in the River Seine during the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The National Lottery Community Fund award will enable SUP not only to purchase a Fluidion Alert 1 monitor and reagents, but also Petrifilm test kits.
Petrifilm, with its sample-ready, streamlined standardized and simplified process of microbial quantitative indicator testing, is used extensively for the enumeration of E.coli and coliforms in the food and beverage industries.
SUP can also now buy riverside warning signs to be displayed at popular bathing sites such as Aysgarth Falls. This summer weekly testing at Aysgarth Falls and Ulshaw Bridge using the Bactiquick hand-held kit showed that the river water was not safe to bathe in.
Prof Richard Loutoka, chairman of SUP, did most of the testing. He said: ‘We wanted a Fluidion machine because it provides a quantified response in terms of E. coli/100 ml present in the sampled water, that has been validated through numerous side-by-side studies with approved laboratories and international organizations including the WHO and UNICEF. By using Fluidion water quality monitoring is considerably simplified whilst reducing costs and also a shortened time between sampling and getting a result. It should give us E.coli levels in between two and 10 hours.
‘We are very grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund because we can not only purchase such equipment but also the necessary reagents.’
The testing carried out this summer with Bactiquick showed just how expensive the reagents are. SUP is also very grateful for local donations which have enabled it to buy these this year.
Last month Jervaulx Fly Fishers Club donated £1,000 to SUP and £146.43p was raised at a coffee morning at Thornton Rust Village Institute. This enabled SUP to purchase an additional Bactiquick monitor and reagents.
About 75 per cent of the £19,992 awarded by The National Lottery Community Fund to SUP will be spent on reagents for testing with Fluidion, Bactiquick and Petrifilm. SUP will also purchase a DJI Flip Drone for reporting any pollution events to the Environment Agency.
The National Lottery Community distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK. It aims to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are: to support communities to come together; be environmentally sustainable; help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, during the year 2023/24 The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects.
To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk