If you find it difficult to think of a river as alive, try picturing a dying or dead river. This is easier. We know what this looks like. We know how it feels. A dying river is one who does not reach the sea. A dying river’s fish float belly-up in stagnant pools. Swans on the upper Thames near Windsor now wear brown tidemarks on their snowy chest feathers, showing where they have sailed through sewage. I recently saw a Southern Water riverbank sign badged with a bright blue logo that read “Water for Life”. The sign instructed passersby to “avoid contact with the water. If you’ve had contact with the water, please wash your hands before eating.” In parts of this septic isle, fresh water has become first undrinkable, then unswimmable, then untouchable.
How did it come to this – and where do we go from here? The crisis is one of imagination as well as of legislation. We have forgotten that our fate flows with that of rivers, and always has. Our relationship with fresh water has become intensely instrumentalised, privatised and monetised: river understood as resource, not life force. The duty of care for rivers, who extend such care to us, has been abrogated. Regulation has gone unenforced, monitoring is strategically underfunded. Rivers named after deities – the Shannon (Sinnan), the Dee (Deva) – now struggle under burdens of nitrates, forever chemicals and waste.
