The WATERSHED investigations

Feargal Sharkey tells Watershed's Rachel Salvidge why he's had enough of playing nicely in his quest to get water companies to stop dumping sewage in rivers and why he is now mobilising the masses to march on Parliament on Saturday 26 October 2024 to demand that industry and its regulators put an end to it. WARNING: CONTAINS F BOMB AND S BOMB. In each episode, investigative journalists Rachel Salv...

Five Just Stop Oil activists receive record sentences for planning to block M25. Watershed attended the sentencing and heard from the celebrity supporters Chris Packham, the wildlife TV presenter, Dale Vince, the head of Ecotricity green energy company, and TV chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. In each episode, investigative journalists Rachel Salvidge and Leana Hosea bring you tales from the front...

The EU Parliament elections have seen rightwing party gains, causing the President of France to call snap elections, possibly empowering the rightwing further. Nobel Peace Prize winning climate scientist, Wolfgang Cramer, talks to Leana Hosea about the implications for the environment. Find out more about Leana and Rachel's work at Watershed Investigations on socials @WATERSHED_i https://watershed...

It’s been ten years since the US state governor of Michigan decided to switch the city of Flint from their clean drinking water supply in Detroit to the Flint river to save money. It led to one of America’s biggest public health crises. Leana Hosea and Rachel Salvidge talk to Professor Laura Sullivan, a resident of Flint and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Kettering University. She tells...

Sacrifice zones are described by the UN as places where people suffer devastating physical and mental health consequences and human rights violations as a result of living in pollution hotspots and heavily contaminated areas. Greenpeace describes them as “geographical areas which are knowingly destroyed in the name of power and profit”. Katta Alonso lives in one such place. She leads the group, Wo...

In this briefing, Leana and Rachel speak to Louisa Casson of Greenpeace, about the battle between miners and environmentalists over the treasure trove of metals at the bottom of the oceans. Casson sheds light on the recent efforts to get Greenpeace thrown out of the of the UN body overseeing controversial plans to begin deep-sea mining. Find out more about Leana and Rachel's work at Watershed Inve...

When UPL's warehouse in Durban was set on fire in 2021, the toxic agrochemicals it housed washed into the river and out to sea, causing a huge marine die-off. Environmental Goldman Prize Winner, Desmond D'Sa, tells us how the catastrophe is still effecting locals, many of whom relied on the sea for their livelihoods. Some of the pesticides were banned in the EU and numerous other countries. There'...

A toxic cocktail of damaging chemicals created by road pollution is flowing into England’s rivers and no regulator is monitoring the scale of its impact on wildlife or public health. In this special episode - a collaboration with the Planet Possible podcast - Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea and Planet Possible host Niki Roach dig into the lesser known problem of river pollution from roads, speaking t...

The people of Gaza are on the frontline of a water crisis. Since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing 1200 Israelis and taking hostages, Gaza has been under unprecedented bombardment, killing more than 28,000 Palestininans, many of them children. Most of the population are displaced and living in unsanitary conditions, with soaring rates of infectious diseases linked to polluted water...

In this special episode, Leana and Rachel discuss their new film in which they travel the country testing for toxic PFAS 'forever chemical' pollution at hotspots around Britain. Find out which river is carrying one of the highest loads of PFAS in the world and how a PFAS factory is discharging a category 1 carcinogen into protected waters. The film is released on 19 February at: https://www.endsre...

The paradise islands of Tuvalu are disappearing beneath the waves as climate change bites. Grace Malie, a Tuvaluan Youth Delegate from the Rising Nations Initiative speaks from COP28 about her hopes and fears and reluctance to abandon her home. Then Margaret Leinen, the Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, sets out her hopes for more ocean action at the COP in Dubai. In...

We bust the myth of recycling, expose the harassment of scientists, discuss waste colonialism, and find out who walked out of the Plastic Treaty negotiations. Leana Hosea and Rachel Salvidge talk to Ahmed Tiamiyu, the Executive Director of the Community Action Against Plastic Waste and Professor Bethanie Carney Almroth, an eco-toxicologist from the University of Gothenburg and a Steering Comm...

Former US EPA official Kyla Bennett talks about her exposure to cancer-linked PFAS chemicals, and Rob Bilott, the lawyer described as 'DuPont's worst nightmare' and who is played by Mark Ruffalo in the Hollywood film Dark Waters, tells Rachel and Leana how he is escalating his legal challenge against the manufacturers of PFAS. Manmade PFAS chemicals are widespread in the environment and they're li...

In this 15 minute briefing, Leana and Rachel pour over Labour's pledges to crack down on the water companies and their other environment promises at the party conference. How much is new, how does it compare to Tory plans and what wasn't said. The devil is always in the detail. Find out more about Leana and Rachel's work at Watershed Investigations @WATERSHED_i Frequency: Fortnightly Duration: App...

Rachel and Leana hear how the beloved River Wye has spiralled from a "crystal clear" natural paradise to a "pea green" algal bloom soup in one man's lifetime. Fly fishing guide Nathan Jubb talks about life on the river and how he places the blamed for its pollution squarely at the feet of agriculture, specifically chicken farms. Then Greenpeace's chief scientific adviser Dr Doug Parr rails against...

In these 10 minute briefings, investigative journalists Leana Hosea and Rachel Salvidge discuss the latest news developments. In this episode they explore the anger around the government's plans to discard protections for rivers against sewage and farm pollution. They also reveal the government's reduction in river testing. Find out more about Leana and Rachel's work at Watershed Investigations @W...

Rachel and Leana hear how the government has "wasted the last 10 years or so in terms of making proper preparations for the way the climate is changing", according to Dame Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, who advises the UK government on preparing for climate change. She says there has been "underinvestment and underpreparation" while temperatures in Europe are "rising at about twice the g...

Cape Town teeters on the edge of Day Zero - the time when water will no longer flow from its taps. But poorer residents are first the feel the thirst and say water rationing is slowly killing them. Rachel and Leana speak to Cape Town residents, including Faeza Meyer from the African Water Commons Collective, about the desperate situation, and interview Professor Hannah Cloke from the University of...

Rachel and Leana interview Nyombi Morris, an environmental activist who was flooded out of his home in Uganda, where drought and locusts are also causing death and displacement. Then Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to prime ministers Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, explains how he plans to reverse the climate crisis by refreezing the Arctic, and reacts to Nyombi's accusations that t...

Rachel and Leana tackle the malodorous issue of raw sewage pollution. Human waste flows through the UK's rivers and seas, fuelling outrage among the population, not least in former rock and pop star Feargal Sharkey, whose righteous fury has kept the scandal at the top of the agenda in the mainstream media and ruffled more than a few feathers in government. In this episode, Sharkey digs into the ro...