River Wye oil spill ‘felt 27 miles away’

The oil spill into the river Wye in Hereford at the weekend ended up smearing canoeists 27 miles downstream for days.

Mike Mitchell, a veteran competitive slalom canoeist and trainer of some of the country’s top youngsters in the sport, said he had to get out of the river  after feeling his face and paddle coated in oil.

It followed the release into the Wye of a large quantity oil from the Rotherwas industrial zone to the southeast of the city, its exact nature and source still unknown.

Mr Mitchell said he had some forewarning of the spill as he monitors social media for news of the Wye upstream such as high water levels.

But the river has been relatively low, meaning the oil “has taken longer to wash through”, he said.

“It gets on the paddle, it stings your lips and gets in your eyes.”

Having begun paddling on the river aged 13, he has seen it change for over half a century – and not for the better.

“The wildlife has gone down and down – you won’t see an otter now, or even a mink,” he said.

“The chicken manure spread on the fields gets washed down after a storm, and the water turns brown and greasy. Then there’s the sewage overflows – you don’t know what’s coming down the river from day to day.”

While not improving, the problem appears to have at least stabilised, he thought.

“Because of the publicity, farmers are cleaning up their act,” he said. “But there needs to be pressure on them and other polluters.”

The leak of what appeared to be fuel oil or kerosene spilling from a concrete pipe by the footpath on the south side of the Wye at Rotherwas was first noticed and reported on Saturday.

The Environment Agency has since put in place an oil boom and pads on the river to contain and absorb the spill, which it is continuing to investigate.

A spokesperson for Herefordshire Council, which owns much of the Rotherwas enterprise zone land, said it had no comment to make as “the EA are leading on this”.