On the left is a close up photograph showing the density of growth now propagated by excess nutrient pollution in Holes Bay.
The worst effects of pollution are in the Holes bay area which has few adjoining fields, or other waterways to inflow pollution, it seems that here Poole Sewerage Treatment Works could be a main source for excess nutrient pollution.
Poole
Harbour having been designated as a Sensitive Area under the Urban Waste
water Treatment Directive in June 2002 means that the Sewerage Treatment
Works will have to install additional nitrogen stripping facilities
to be completed by 2009.
It
seems that urban development is increasing faster than the Sewerage
Treatment Works can be upgraded. This seriously precludes any prospect
of reversing the deterioration of Poole Harbour as any improvement to
effluent quality will always be years too late!
Wessex
Water have spent large sums of money since
1992 upgrading Poole SWT in an effort to keep up with ever increasing
demands on it, they are also upgrading all other Sewerage Treatment
Plants that feed into Poole Harbour over the next few years.
Chemical run - off from farmland, chemicals introduced through waste water, ever increasing amounts of sewerage from an increasing population, extensive use of garden fertilizers and rubbish leakage into waterways is contributing to a severe worldwide increase in excess nitrogen/phosphate pollution.
In
addition to work required by the various Sewerage Treatment Works, enforcing
action under the Nitrates Directive the Government is working to reduce
pollution from agriculture by restricting nitrate losses from farming.
This includes tighter control on the use of fertilizer, which became effective
from December 2002.
Further information available from DEFRA
Pleasure craft are now clogging up our harbour's as cars are our roads, one difference being that as well as polluting the air, the many thousands of pleasure craft, often with lots of people on board, usually discharge their raw effluent straight into the water of Poole Harbour.
This is an extra burden for Poole harbour which has been steadily increasing, where will it end?
