‘We need to keep up the pressure on water companies’: the farmer fighting to save Britain’s waterways
When the water company executive arrived, John Barker presented him with a bucket of dead fish. It was September 2020. Barker was furious. The fish came from the River Ems, which winds for six miles from Stoughton, West Sussex, to Chichester Harbour.
Barker, 68, a retired environmental campaigner, owns a sustainable farm in the village of Westbourne. The Ems flows through it. Barker prizes it because it is one of only 200 chalk streams in the world. Shallow and clear, the streams rise from chalk aquifers and springs, and are beloved by many – 85% of the world’s chalk streams are in England.
But across England, over-abstractionby water companies over decades has been damaging the balance of these unique streams, and the wildlife they harbour. (Abstraction means taking water from any source.) “Our chalk streams desperately need support,” says Barker, “and for people to stop hammering them.”
For years, he had watched, incensed, as the water level in the Ems grew steadily lower – water was being siphoned from the aquifer that feeds it by utility company Portsmouth Water. Then, in 2020, it finally happened. In Westbourne, the Ems ran dry. “Portsmouth Water,” says Barker, “have, as part of their abstraction licence, a commitment to pump water back into the river if the flow gets low. But its pumps failed and its alarms didn’t work. The river dried up in the village for the first time in living memory.” Barker felt utter desperation.
He had co-founded the Friends of the River Ems earlier that year. “John is a quiet achiever,” says Sandy Barker, a fellow Friend. “He gets a lot done and wears his considerable expertise lightly.”
When the river dried up, Barker’s group sprang into action. “There were shallow pools of water with trout
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