Rob Oates (Director, Thames River Restoration Trust) and Alastair Driver
(National Conservation Manager, Environment Agency) with Tim Winton (Australian author) and Tikki Fullerton (Australian Broadcasting Corporation presenter).

The international riverprize is the largest environmental award in the world and it celebrates outstanding achievements in river management and restoration. It is awarded each year at the International Riversymposium in Australia and is a partnership between the symposium and the International Riverfoundation.

The winning submission was made by the Thames Region of the Environment Agency for England andWales and fronted by their National ConservationManager, Alastair Driver, but it represented many decades of work by thousands of individuals from hundreds of organisations.

The River Thames is the UK’s second longest river at 294 kms long and the catchment covers 16,000 km², with a dense population of 13 million people. The River Thames flows from the green rural upper reaches of the Cotswolds, through large urban centres of Oxford and Reading and the UK’s capital’s city, London, on through the industrial heartland of Essex and Kent, and thus to the North Sea. The river is non-tidal as far as Teddington Lock inWest London, and is then tidal throughout London with a tidal range of seven metres.

The transformation of the Thames. Pollution of the tidal Thames left it biologically dead in the 1950s, but since then the river has been transformed into a thriving ecosystem teeming with fish, and with returning sea trout and otter populations. However, the Environment Agency acknowledged in its submission that there is still much work to be done to continue improving the quality of the river – especially the tidal Thames and its tributaries in London.

The Environment Agency’s submission focused on five wide-ranging projects to demonstrate the innovative and challenging solutions now under way to achieve this further improvement:
Catchment Sensitive Farming: working with farmers to reduce rural diffuse pollution from nutrients and pesticides.
The Jubilee River flood alleviation scheme: creating a new 11 km stretch of naturalistic river and habitats, whilst delivering flood protection to 5,500 homes.
The London Rivers Action Plan: helping restore London’s urban rivers, with 58 new river restoration projects in progress since its launch in 2009.
The London Tideway Improvements: three ThamesWater schemes to tackle the 39 million tonnes on average of storm sewer overflows that enter the tidal Thames in an average year. These are the £675m SewageWorks Upgrades, the £635m Lee Tunnel, and the proposed Thames Tunnel (estimated cost £3.6bn).
Thames Estuary 2100: a 100-year adaptable plan directing the future sustainable management of tidal flood risk in the Thames estuary, and protecting over 1.25 million people and £200bn in property value.

“In the last 150 years, the Thames has been to hell and back, but now it really is back and it’s time we shared our pride in this with the rest of the world,” said Alastair Driver, former Conservation Manager for the Thames for 18 years and now National Conservation Manager for the Environment Agency. “This recovery didn’t just happen, it took thousands of people and billions of pounds over many decades to reach this point – and it’s important that rivers around the world can hear about the highs and lows that we and our many partners have had along the way.”

Ensuring long-term sustainability. “This change was delivered through our stronger regulation, investment by water companies, environmentally sensitive river management and a decline in polluting industries,” said Howard Davidson, Thames Director for the Environment Agency Thames Region. “But the recovery is fragile and under pressure from a growing population, ageing infrastructure, climate change, diffuse pollution and fragmentation of habitat. Through the innovative projects that we have cited in our Riverprize application, we and our many partners can demonstrate to the world that we are tackling these challenges head-on, to ensure that the Thames remains an iconic river for many centuries to come.”

Feedback from the judging panel confirmed that the submission clearly demonstrated long-term sustained on-the-ground improvement of the Thames and its tributaries backed up with “excellent” data and evidence, as well as best practice in stakeholder engagement, and innovation in planning for the future uncertainties of climate change. The other finalists from over 20 entries were Hattah Lakes from Australia, Smirnykh River from Russia and the Yellow River from China.

The Riverprize trophy and cheque for AUS $350,000 was presented on 12 Oct 2010 at the International Riversymposium in Perth,Western Australia. The Thames RegionalManagement team for the Environment Agency have agreed to use the prize money to establish a twinning project with a river in India that requires skills and resources to facilitate large scale ecological restoration.

The River Thames in London looking up river to the city from the Thames Tidal Flood Barrier

Aisha Burtally is the Principal Officer, External Relations, at the
Environment Agency, covering the Thames Estuary.