When every drop counts: Eight stories to help understand the water that surrounds us

The river keeper

Getting soaked by freezing Upper Test water has happened more than a few times, as I have been known to believe I’m taller than I am, especially in waders,’ laughs Michael Taplin, river keeper at Wherwell Priory in Hampshire. ‘It also means I am on my third mobile phone and counting, having lost the previous ones to the river.’

His career path was an obvious one: he grew up a stone’s throw from the River Test and next to the boundary between the Houghton Fishing Club and the Leckford estate. He fished with his father and grandfather, messed around on the river after school and spent time with family friends who worked as river keepers. His employment is, he says: ‘My job, life and passion. Like any keepering role, it cannot be viewed as work, but more of a vocation.’

During winter, when the banks are empty of fishermen, major projects are carried out: constructing bridges, re-building banks, tree work, moving whole river channels, creating large wetland areas and digging new lakes. The summer is predominantly about managing the river and banks, with mowing, strimming and weed cutting. As well as maintenance, the role includes guiding experienced fishermen or teaching newcomers about chalk-stream fishing.

The appeal is that the environment is constantly changing: ‘No two seasons are the same and it fascinates me how altering one thing affects everything else down the line, whether that be weed growth, gravels, fly life or where the fish hold in a particular stretch of water.’ Taplin explains: ‘In my opinion, the basis of everything is weed. Ranunculus is the most important for us here. With ranunculus comes cleaner water, a sustained level, more fly life and happier trout. It needs flow and light to grow, so, generally, with a good winter of rainfall, a decent flow of water and some spring sunshine, it thrives. Then we can cut and shape the weed in order to maintain a healthy fishery. Observing these changes and drawing patterns is what helps me to continually improve the health of the river and, with that, improve the quality of fishing and the experience of being alongside it.’ Mary Skipwith

The open-water swimmer

Belle Kennedy found her appreciation of water changed dramatically when she went to university in the maritime city of Plymouth, where she is studying ocean science and marine conservation.

‘I used to be a competitive swimmer when young, but it left me with a difficult relationship both with water and swimming,’ she says. ‘Since coming to Plymouth, I have got massively into swimming in open water, which has changed how I view the coast and made me want to protect it. Tinside beach is especially popular here — as soon as the sun comes out, everyone is paddling and swimming — but, unfortunately, it is also popular with sewage. It has been a shock to discover how dirty the sea can be. You can’t see it physically — the water isn’t brown — which is why sewage alerts are really important. In 2025, it was the most polluted beach in England and Wales.’

Kennedy volunteers for the Rock Pool Project, a community movement collecting data on marine species, and for Surfers Against Sewage, a campaign group involving anyone using the sea. ‘The more volunteering I do, the more conscious I have become as to how fragile these ecosystems are. The pollution isn’t only affecting people, but wildlife, too. The Rock Pool Project is a great way to collect data, you get to connect with local people and it’s fun.’

She joined Surfers Against Sewage as a regional rep this year and answered a call-out to organise a nationwide paddle-out to raise awareness of pollution; more than 50 coastal locations joined in, making it one of the biggest turn-outs for years. ‘I’d seen it on social media before and I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity,’ Kennedy explains. ‘It was such a wonderful event, with a sense of collective care. It felt deeply humbling and was also a reality check, that the problem doesn’t only weigh on me, it weighs on others.’

The main aim of the event is to lobby water companies, calling on them to be accountable and to organise long-term fixes. ‘It is inevitable that it becomes political, but it is annoying,’ Kennedy comments. ‘Clean water should be a basic expectation. I think public awareness has shifted significantly. These conversations once felt confined to government circles, but now people are aware of the wider failures of water companies and the dangers of getting into dirty water. There is a strong sense that public pressure does matter.’ Kate Green

The wetlands scientist

Lizzie Grayshon, an ecologist at the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) charity for 11 years, works mainly on wetland conservation in the Avon valley, which links Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire. This involves monitoring water quality, restoring wader bird numbers, releasing water voles and working with the local Farmer Cluster, part of a 100-plus-strong initiative in which groups of farmers work together to revive biodiversity relevant to their area.

Here, that is principally providing habitat for wader chick rearing and improving water quality. ‘Everyone is connected by the river and the flood plain,’ she explains. ‘It’s a beautiful place. There are not only waders, but meadow specialists — reed warblers, meadow pipits, cirl buntings and marsh harriers. We’ve had a huge gaggle of geese this year and loads of cattle egrets. As much as the marsh harriers cause problems for the waders, their presence is a good [biodiversity] indicator, although yesterday I saw one take a lapwing chick — you do have mixed feelings.

‘It is a protected area, but it is farmed and managed with grazing [mostly by cattle] and hay cutting, so has a nice mosaic of habitats. We advocate best-practice lethal and non-lethal control of predator species, which here include protected ones, such as buzzards, red kites and goshawks. Climate change plays a part; we are a relatively natural flood plain — one minute it’s under water, the next, it’s bone dry.’

The much-loved water vole is another helpful indicator of wetland health, a once-abundant native species that has declined through habitat loss and predation. Grayshon has been involved in an eight-year focus to identify and remove its chief enemy, the mink: ‘They really limit water voles’ recovery and success. We have been encouraging landowners to use their mink rafts [which float and detect the mustelids through their footprints], plus we supply traps and camera alarms.’

Wetlands provide a great natural cleaning service: they take in phosphates and absorb pollution, plus they are useful indicators of water quality and pollution sources. ‘Farming tends to take the rap, but is by no means responsible for all of it — there are a lot of people and villages and towns,’ says Grayshon. ‘We are under pressure here because the river meadows are SSSI-protected and there’s a designated inland bathing area at Fordingbridge, so testing has increased. There’s definitely a shift in public perception and councils, water companies and farmers are under more obligation to improve water health.’ KG

The river restorer

Phil Wright had been in the military for nearly 21 years when he was medically discharged with conflict PTSD in December 2021. It followed a couple of harrowing tours in Afghanistan when he had been seconded to an army special investigation branch and was ‘basically, dealing with death’.

He was directed to the charity Supporting Wounded Veterans and, through its mentoring programme, joined the Rivers’ Forum, its initiative to tackle pollution and simultaneously develop career opportunities for veterans. His first job was a pilot testing project on the River Dart in Devon using various methodologies and equipment including auto- and satellite testers. ‘I was on the upper Dart, which is remote and right up on the moor. It’s a spectacular river and one I knew well from Totnes down from Dartmouth from my time in the Navy,’ Wright explains. ‘I have had some mental-health struggles, but water is a very calming environment and being around it doesn’t really feel like work.’

Wright, an angler (mainly carp) and a canoeist (he was off to paddle the Great Glen in Scotland last month), also works for the Western Sussex Rivers Trust, which looks after the Lavant and Rother. ‘That job is currently less “rivery”,’ he explains. ‘I am on a temporary contract doing admin and finance, plus some geo-spatial mapping work, but I will be getting into river restoration work. Since I started, I have been massively surprised by how unclean some rivers are, despite appearances, with pollution and loss of biodiversity. A lot of work is needed. It’s completely new stuff for me to learn, really fascinating.

'Since being discharged, I have struggled to find a sense of purpose — quite a common experience for veterans — but this work has given it to me. Merely working for a wage is not good for the head.’ KG

The water campaigner

Katie Alcott, founder of international charity Frank Water, realised at first hand the problems caused by filthy water when she was 19 and working in a school in Kashmir in India. She took her customary two-litre bottle of water with her when out to supper with a local family, but, when it ran out during a hot curry, she drank their water: ‘Within half an hour, I was well acquainted with the bathroom.’

Those few swigs led to a three-year struggle with amoebic dysentery. ‘I knew nothing then — in the UK, we have the NHS, we turn on taps. You are unlikely to get unwell here from drinking tap water,’ she says. ‘A few weeks after getting ill, I noticed that beyond the junior part of the school, there were hardly any girls. The headmistress explained that it was water related — as soon as a girl can carry 10 litres of water, they are kept busy at home, plus they are off school when they are menstruating. This totally shocked me. I realised that families were living off water from an open well that was filthy — people had even fallen into it and died — and from a river where buffalos were pooping, not to mention humans. I realised how many opportunities women were missing out on through water.’

Much of Frank Water’s work is abroad, in places where water shortages are causing environmental migration and where huge quantities of water are being used to supply the western world, such as with rice-growing in India. ‘A lot of our work is about how water flows. Then there comes a greater respect and love for it. We work with nature, looking at geology and hydrology, where rock is porous and where it can charge to the aquifer successfully, ensuring that solutions are natural.’ Now, however, there can no longer be complacency about water in the UK — in the week of this interview, customers of South East Water had no supplies. ‘Our work is focused on seeing water as part of the whole system. Every drop counts,’ Alcott explains.

‘We have plentiful rain in the UK, but we have become disconnected from the water cycle. We have tarmacked miles of city centres, we are putting down fake turf and paving over front lawns to park cars. We are still building houses that flush lavatories with drinking-quality water — that’s bonkers. The rain has nowhere to go — it’s zooming down storm drains into rivers, taking rubbish with it. We’re sleepwalking into an ecological disaster.’

She adds: ‘It is more of a landscape issue in Britain. Farmers are under pressure to grow food for people and animals and the soil isn’t able to use water as it once would have done: it isn’t healthy enough to soak it up and let it re-percolate into the right places. We have seen water purely as a resource and have managed it to the nth degree instead of working with it. It’s not being held in the right places — or enough places — hence destructive floods.’

Alcott observes that if access to water is improved, people automatically use more of it. ‘With new housing stock, there should be a policy that they all have rainwater storage and use grey water to flush loos. Everyone should be self-sufficient in the hottest months.’ KG

The dowser

John Baker discovered he could divine water during a random post-Sunday-lunch game with friends some 30 years ago. ‘Someone had seen it in a magazine and thought it a good idea to have a dabble,’ he recalls. ‘A pair of L-shaped metal rods pointing outwards like six-guns were shoved in my hand and we were told to walk down a drive. It felt extremely silly. All of a sudden, the rods swung against me and my host explained that I was standing over the water pipe to the greenhouse. Then, after a few paces, the rod swung out, which was even more bizarre. That turned out to be because of an electrical current running to lights in the orchard. I was quite amazed.’

Baker, who then ran his own construction business, explains most dowsers discover their capability by accident. ‘You certainly can’t force it — you’re like a dummy waiting for something to happen. After a while, you realise you can tune your subconscious mind into looking for something specific, like tuning a radio. You learn to use your conscious and unconscious mind together — Nature’s answer to Google.’ Wanting to discover ‘if I was going mad or not’, he joined a local archaeological group where he was initially ‘treated with disdain as the weirdo with the rod. Then they twigged that I could save them a lot of digging. You can find anything under the ground if you can find water’.

His work now may involve searching for crypts under churches, looking for wells — ‘these can be dangerous if they collapse’ — and working with construction companies to investigate for leftover war ordnance or with landscape designers to check for springs. ‘This planet is covered with tens of millions of springs and building work can shift them around. Yesterday, I was with a friend who wanted to check if they really needed a new boiler. I don’t think they do — they’ve just got a leaky pipe. What I do is Marmite: you either accept it works or you pooh-pooh it. People think the computer is the great innovator, but we forget we have a brain that is a million times better than any computer and we’re not using it.’ KG

John Baker teaches dowsing and is the author of ‘One Man and his Rods’, available from the British Society of Dowsing

The campaigner for fish

'I had had a lifelong obsession with fish and rivers,’ admits Nick Measham, chief executive of WildFish. ‘My parents bought me a fishing rod when we were on holiday in Scotland when I was 10, which fuelled the passion. I’ve gone full circle to messing about with rivers again, although admittedly in a more serious way than playing Poohsticks.’

In 2014, Measham landed with WildFish, the only independent charity in the UK that campaigns for wild fish and their environment. It came about after a stint volunteering to help run the monitoring of phosphate pollution coming from cress farms into nearby rivers. ‘Our goal is healthy, sustainable populations of wild fish,’ he explains. ‘Fish are at the apex of the biodiversity crisis. We work on evidence and we use the law when needed to hold the Government and its regulators to account.’

Campaigns by WildFish focus on ‘what fish want’, which is healthy water and connected rivers. According to Measham, the UK’s rivers and coastal waters are in a poor state. More than 80% of rivers fail the Water Framework Directive’s standard of ‘good’, a minimum acceptable outcome. ‘Our rivers are special because they are unique habitats that are home to rare life — Atlantic salmon and freshwater pearl mussels, as well as plants and invertebrates — which are critical to maintaining biodiversity,’ he explains. ‘Protecting these endangered species is central; if we fix it for salmon, we fix it for everything that swims, including us. We do this by tackling the causes rather than mitigating the symptoms.’

This means reducing abstraction (extracting water from natural resources), stopping pollution from sewage and agriculture, removing barriers to migration and ending open-net salmon farming. ‘Wherever the salmon farming industry exists, it is the num- ber one threat to migratory fish, such as wild salmon and sea trout. It’s in our power to stop this if we have the desire, so one goal is to bring salmon farming to an end.’

Another of the charity’s projects is Smart-Rivers, in which volunteers monitor their local rivers and collect industry-grade data that can highlight any stressors. This crucial scientific data provides WildFish with the evidence needed to take action. ‘Anyone can participate because we help teach members of the public how to become citizen scientists. Amplifying our collective voice is crucial in this day and age to get politicians to listen.’ MS

The lifeboat crew member

Despite living near the Thames, Claire Price had never considered volunteering for the RNLI until a school mum who helms at Teddington Lifeboat Station in Richmond, asked if she might be interested. ‘From the first time I came to the station, I was hooked by the combination of being able to give back to the community, do something different, learn new skills and be part of an amazing group of people,’ she explains.

She has been volunteering for more than four years, starting as shore crew before working her way through the lifeboat crew levels. ‘People think that you need to have a maritime background, but most of our crew don’t — we have architects, lawyers and IT consultants,’ says Price, a management consultant. ‘It’s also great to challenge the misconception that lifeboat crews are made up purely of men — about 15% of RNLI operational crew are female.’

Teddington is one of four lifeboat stations on the Thames and one of the first to cover a river; the service was started in 2002 after the tragic Marchioness collision in 1989. The crew trains together weekly to ensure they can deal with whatever might be thrown at them. ‘We never know what awaits us until we are briefed by the launch authority. If my pager goes off when I am on call, I have to stop what I am doing and run to the station. Our target is to have the boat in the water six minutes after the pager sounds.’

Rivers and inland waters can be as unpredictable as coastal ones and they pose many challenges, as proven by the number of fatal incidents during the May heatwave. ‘Although it’s warm outside, the water temperature can be as low as 12˚C, which leads to a danger of cold-water shock and drowning,’ Price warns.

‘Two recent shouts I’ve been on involved local residents who had their own boats and ended up in the water without life jackets. They were incredibly lucky to have been rescued by members of the public before we arrived. Hearing them talk about their experiences was really emotional and a stark reminder about the danger the river poses even to people who are very familiar with it, but it was also a great reminder of the community that exists on and around the water.’ MS