Water quality: Our position 

The RYA wishes to see cleaner waters for safe, healthy, enjoyable recreational boating across the whole of the UK.

Clean water testing

The RYA is a founding member of the Clean Water Sports Alliance. The Alliance is advocating for the restoration of the UK’s blue spaces for the enjoyment of all and we want to see those environments free of pollution and havens for wildlife, as well as places for everyone to be active in sport and recreation. 

Our concerns are both about the safety of the water from a human health perspective and the maintenance of a clean, natural, wildlife-rich environment for our members to enjoy. 

We align with the Clean Water Sports Alliance in calling for: 

  • Further and faster action on water pollution, significantly improving the health of UK waters by 2030. 
  • Enabling people to make real-time informed choices about where and when to participate in water-based sports and activities through enhanced testing and live provision of information on pollution incidents.  
  • The recognition of all recreational water users, rather than the current very limited focus on bathing beaches, across decision making and policy. This is a key issue for the RYA given the wide range of activities that our members take part in. 

In addition, the RYA wants to see water quality testing undertaken year-round, whereas current testing is in the summer season of May to September. 

We recognise that sewage pollution is only one aspect of water quality and call equally for action to control agricultural and industrial run-off. Nutrient loading from agricultural run-off has the potential to impact recreational activities through the formation of toxic algal blooms and impacts on wildlife through the reduction in biodiversity that results. 

Background

Poor water quality 

The UK has continued to score near the bottom of the European bathing water quality index, with the limited action currently being taken not making significant improvements.  

Pollution impacting activities and events 

Pollution from various sources contaminates UK inland and coastal waters, damaging ecosystems and causing illness within people who take part in sport and physical activity in, on or around these waters. Water that is unfit to host water-based sport has also caused events, training sessions and activities to be cancelled or postponed because it has not met the standards for safe participation.  

Threat to biodiversity 

Biodiversity is also being put under immense pressure, threatened by pollution as well as by invasive species which alter our ecosystems, introducing new pathogens and costing the UK £4 billion a year according to a 2023 paper. 

Inadequate water quality testing 

A key issue for the RYA’s members and affiliates is that current official water quality testing is confined to designated bathing beaches and takes place from May through to September. Our stakeholders are in or on the water year-round on most inland and coastal waters, not restricted to specific beach locations. 

We need better data and guidance to enable people to make informed decisions about going on or in the water, both to protect them from harm and to encourage them to participate when it is safe to do so. 

Our asks 

The RYA, in line with the Clean Water Sports Alliance, is making three asks of regulators and decision makers: 

  • Regulators to be adequately funded to monitor, investigate, and hold polluters to account, applying the law as it stands 
  • Enable accurate access to real-time water quality information all year round including the compulsory monitoring of all sewage outlets; recognition of open-source science relating to water quality and the creation of a centralised information hub for all water sports users.
  • We advocate a change from ‘bathing waters’ to ‘recreational waters’ within government policy to recognise the wide range of activities that depend on clean water

What we’re doing

  • We are signed up to the Surfers Against Sewage End Sewage Pollution Manifesto
  • We were a founding member of the Clean Water Sports Alliance.
  • We actively lobbying Government and statutory bodies about this subject.
  • We are setting up a citizen science project alongside other sports bodies to enable our members to test water quality and use that data to inform decisions
  • We are providing guidance to our members, affiliates, and recognised training centres to help them to make decisions about water quality and its impact on activities
  • We recognise the potential impact of boating activities on water quality. Through The Green Blue, our environmental outreach programme, we encourage boaters to adopt best practice, including fitting holding tanks, using pump-out facilities, moving to more environmentally friendly antifouls and making environmental choices when selecting cleaning products

Links

End Sewage Pollution Manifesto

The Green Blue: black water disposal