The mountainous region surrounding Helvellyn, the Lake District’s third highest peak, gathers a substantial portion of the rainwater that supplies homes, businesses and public buildings throughout the north-west of England.
“The fact of the matter is that the most precious resource, the thing that we really cannot rely on anywhere else, is the water,” says John Gorst, a catchment partnership officer at the water company United Utilities, which has 7.5 million customers in the region.
Despite being the wettest part of England, the Lake District faces significant water-related challenges. None of the national park’s lakes or rivers are deemed to be in “good health” ecologically and chemically, with Windermere in a particularly perilous condition.
Moreover, in recent years parts of the Lake District have lurched between destructive flooding and serious droughts, drying its rivers and reservoirs. As the climate crisis intensifies, these extreme events – wet and dry – are predicted to strike more frequently and ferociously, putting immense pressure on the watercourses that sustain people and wildlife alike.
The future need not look so bleak, however. The Cumbria River Restoration partnership, which won the European Riverprize last year, is one beacon of hope. The land “is our primary filter”, Gorst says, and as such the ambition of this collaborative effort is to regenerate natural habitats so that they can soak up, purify and slow down freshwater, enhancing water security, quality and availability for all.
The project, which involves the Environment Agency, the RSPB, the National Trust, Ullswater Catchment Management, a community interest company (CIC), Natural England, United Utilities and the Eden, South Cumbria & West Cumbria Rivers Trusts, has so far completed more than 100 projects, restoring habitats throughout three Cumbrian river catchments.
A stormy catalyst
According to Gorst, his company’s ambition to deploy nature-based solutions at “catchment scale” was fast-tracked by the calamitous effects wreaked by 2015’s Storm Desmond on Thirlmere, a reservoir in the valley below Helvellyn. The storm vented a record-breaking 405mm of rain on to Thirlmere’s already water-soaked fells. Landslips swept hundreds of thousands of tons of peat, soil and stone off the hillsides. The main road was blocked and the reservoir’s water, which together with nearby Haweswater is the essential supply for more than one-third of United Utilities’ customers, remained unusably turbid for several days.
Two days after the storm, Gorst visited the nearby Ennerdale Water and had a “massive lightbulb moment”. While Thirlmere’s water was still muddy brown, Ennerdale’s was “gin clear”. The reason, Gorst believes, is that Ennerdale is the site of one of England’s longest-running rewilding initiatives, Wild Ennerdale. Peatbogs have been restored, riparian tree corridors better follow the valley’s streams, and the braided River Liza – unlike any other English river – meanders freely through its floodplain.
On the hillside above Thirlmere, United Utilities – in partnership with Natural England and local farmers or “commoners” – has established a 90-hectare stock-free exclosure, planted 10 years ago with native trees. Gorst emphasises the huge importance of the upper 10cm of vegetation. Plunging his hand into the mossy sward, he notes the contrast between the “hot and crispy surface” and the cool, wet layer just an inch below. “We’re starting from such a denuded landscape,” he says, “we just need to get this structure back.” The common lizards, voles, young frogs and butterflies and dragonflies skittering out of our way show this not only helps keep the taps running, it boosts biodiversity too.
Greenwash?
With 56,000 hectares of land, United Utilities is the biggest private landowner in the north-west. As it takes water from an enormous 500,000 hectares, it seeks to influence land management decisions across vast swathes of the English uplands.
The choices it makes are not always popular. For example, its 2019 decision to take Thirlmere’s West Head farm back “in hand” and dramatically reduce the size of its flock of local breed Herdwick sheep was greeted with anger by some in the farming community.
Furthermore, some locals grumble that the ecological restoration that United Utilities is undertaking in the uplands is an attempt to distract from the environmental harms it causes elsewhere. Environment Agency data shows that in 2022, United Utilities may have discharged more raw sewage into waterways than any other water company in England. Its sewage treatment infrastructure, along with nutrient run-off from farms and private septic tanks, also contributes to the challenges faced by Windermere and other lakes, rivers, and estuaries.
Gorst insists the company is investing in the landscape “because it’s core to our business”. “This is not a new development for us,” he adds. “We’ve been working with partners to restore landscapes and biodiversity on our reservoir land holdings for more than 20 years.” Cleaner “raw water” at point of collection needs less treatment, he says, so better “green” infrastructure in upper catchments can mean less expensive “grey” infrastructure farther downstream.
Sir John Lawton, a renowned ecologist, seems to broadly agree with this assessment. The habitat restoration work United Utilities is undertaking “does greenwash them”, he says, “but that’s not the reason they’re doing it. They’re doing it because it helps their bottom line”.
Building resilience
One of the smaller partners in Cumbria’s River Restoration Programme is Ullswater Catchment Management CIC, co-founded by Danny and Maddy Teasdale. Glenridding, their village, suffered heavily during Storm Desmond. Maddy says the flood damage caused a rift within the community, with some advocating nature-based solutions while others favoured concrete-based flood defences.
The Teasdales work with farmers, landowners, the Environment Agency and local contractors to plan and deliver nature-based interventions for water and biodiversity, including planting soil-stabilising trees and hedges, restoring streams and constructing wetlands. Crucially, they connect land managers with funders.
In Matterdale, north of Ullswater, the Teasdales showcase a recent project on a stream, or beck. Previously, the beck’s banks were “armoured” with large rocks to hasten water flow. This spring, Danny relocated the boulders to the midstream. The result was immediate: young trout and salmon sought refuge beneath them.
In an unproductive, flood-prone corner of a nearby field, the landowner embraced the idea of working with water rather than against it. Demonstrating the “build it and they will come” principle, a newly scraped-out shallow pond now teems with pond skaters, blue damselflies and low-flying swallows, while the field’s damp margins are decorated by diverse wildflowers.
The Teasdales report increasing interest from farmers and the interventions appear effective: villagers note slower rising flood waters, and restored watercourses remained wet during this summer’s prolonged dry spell.
The couple attribute their success to their local, collaborative approach. “We’ve got skin in this game. It has to work. We don’t have the luxury of running away and hiding behind a big organisation,” says Danny.
They’re also determined to avoid what they see as destructive polarisation between farmers and conservationists. “They’re both shouting at each other, and nothing happens,” Maddy says, but “if you can engage with groups of farmers, you can scale up the work far, far beyond individual plots.”
‘Climate change scares the hell out of me’
Lawton says: “There’s no question that there’s a huge amount of habitat restoration and recreation going on, but climate change scares the hell out of me.” The ecologist condemns the “complete lack of evidence-based policy and honesty, from politicians of all shades,” that he says is slowing progress: “They’re just not telling it like it is.”
Lawton says the Environment Agency and Natural England have been “cut to the bone by the present government – I believe, deliberately”. As a result, he says, the two public bodies with the most power to steer water companies, farmers and land users in the right direction are unable to deliver “one-half of what they’re supposed to deliver, because they don’t have the budget”.
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency told the Guardian: “Like the rest of the public sector, we operate within a tight budget and must prioritise to ensure we are doing the best we can, with the money we have, for the people and places we serve.”
A Defra spokesperson said: “This government is going further and faster for nature than any other, with the Environmental Improvement Plan and legally binding targets demonstrating our commitment to nature. That is why we have boosted funding for the Environment Agency to £1.42bn, while Natural England’s budget has risen for the fifth consecutive year, to £327.8m.”
Lawton is hopeful for the future of freshwater ecosystems in the Lake District and beyond. “It’s a messy, iterative, frustrating, two steps forward one step back process,” he says, “but eventually, usually, the right thing happens.”
