{"id":168290,"date":"2025-11-30T22:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T22:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/168290\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T22:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T22:50:11","slug":"river-skerne-foam-had-no-environmental-impact-says-ea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/168290\/","title":{"rendered":"River Skerne foam had no environmental impact, says EA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tom BurgessNorth East and Cumbria<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763998991_60_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/faf51ec0-99f9-11f0-88dc-4bebfe637e18.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"Chris Davison A thick layer of white foam with ripples in it is completely covering the surface of a river. There is a bridge in the background. The photo appears to have been taken in darkness.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Chris Davison<\/p>\n<p>The Environment Agency did find detergents present in the water<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Water testing has found a large stretch of white foam which appeared on a river had &#8220;no environmental impact&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Environment Agency (EA) took water quality readings of the River Skerne in Darlington with multimeters after the snow-like foam appeared in September, and they all came back within the usual limits of the river.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Low levels of detergents were found, with the EA&#8217;s National Chemicals Team concerned it could be fire-fighting foam, but it was confirmed none had been used in the previous 48 hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A spokesperson for the EA said &#8220;foam cases are very time sensitive&#8221; and urged people to call their incident hotline as soon as they saw them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Chris Davison, who discovered the foam when cycling home on 24 September, said he was pleased there was no long-term environmental impact as &#8220;any kind of pollution in our rivers is a tragedy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;I was really worried about the wildlife, considering the volume of the white foam I witnessed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;I&#8217;m a bit disappointed they could not pinpoint exactly where the source of the pollution came from.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He added: &#8220;My only worry is that whoever did this, might think they can get away with it and do it again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763998991_60_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/37e85120-9d4d-11f0-9e5e-c7b443a2076d.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Chris Davison A large patch of foam covering part of a river from one bank to the other. It has drifted into a bank of reeds. A slightly rusted metal barrier can be seen along the bottom of the picture.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Chris Davison<\/p>\n<p>The foam on the River Skerne disappeared within days<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Ben Lamb, CEO of the Tees Rivers Trust, said it is &#8220;good news&#8221; the Skerne avoided a pollution incident following the foam-wave.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He said it was &#8220;less encouraging that the source remains unknown&#8221; and nothing could be done to stop it happening again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;The EA need more resources to carry out their work effectively,&#8221; Mr Lamb said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;Incidents like this shine a light on the strange lack of respect that we as a society have for our water.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">An EA spokesperson said: &#8220;Our officers conducted water testing of the River Skerne after a foam incident in Darlington in September. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;Thankfully, our findings show no environmental impact as water quality readings were as expected.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom BurgessNorth East and Cumbria Chris Davison The Environment Agency did find detergents present in the water Water&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-168290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}