Looking away from Britain's biggest water pollution scandal should not be rewarded with a knighthood, writes Matthew Wright

As someone who spends a considerable amount of his time physically in the rivers and seas of this country, I’ve long been frustrated, sickened frankly, that James Bevan still retains the title Sir after being honoured by the Crown back in 2012.

In the years that followed his knighthood, I’ve watched the near-universal degradation of our rivers and waterways by profiteering, privatised water companies who only got away with it because James Bevan and his team were happy to look the other way. The very people charged with protecting our water were complicit in its destruction.

I’ve witnessed firsthand how magnificent rivers like the Teifi in Wales have been choked and poisoned by sewage, leading to massive slumps in the number of insect hatches the river can produce, starving birds, small mammals, amphibians and what’s left of this country’s reptiles.

The fish, of course, are suffering too. Huge drops in salmon and sea trout numbers running upstream to breed stand in stark contrast to 100 years ago, when these self same rivers were a source of abundance. The Atlantic salmon faces extinction.

Sewage is a big part of the problem, but it’s by no means the only issue our rivers must contend with: agricultural runoff, road runoff, and industrial leaks all play a part in poisoning our water, as do we, everyday consumers. However, nothing brings home quite how disgusting the situation has become than fishing up a river where sanitary products and 'flushable' wet wipes hang drying in the branches of the trees and shrubs that line the banks.

Thanks to the amazing work of Peter and Ash at Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, immortalised in laudable Channel 4 docudrama Dirty Business, the British public have now been given a sickening insight into the state of our waterways, and they’re understandably furious. None of it was news to me. Like many anglers, I’ve been wading through this muck for years.

The first time I heard about sewage fungus was in the early noughties, after I accidentally dropped my car key in the River Test, one of the most extraordinary rivers in the world, emerging crystal clear as it does after being filtered through a chalk spring.

It sounds like the very essence of purity, doesn’t it, but my car key vanished when it hit the riverbed. As soon as I put my hand down to find it, the clear water immediately became cloudy, a murky green/brown colour, making it impossible to find the key that must have been right under my nose. That, I learned, was sewage fungus and in the years since I’ve seen it spread just about everywhere, even on to my beloved Devon streams.

I was astonished to discover, while Bevan was still at the EA, that both the river Test and its arguably more beautiful sister, the river Itchen, had numerous sewage outlets emptying into them. The lack of meaningful monitoring of these outlets, the lack of inspections, and, let alone, enforcement action by the Environment Agency over the years meant water companies could reward themselves and their investors at the expense of us consumers and our national infrastructure. A racket, a swindle, a filthy, dirty con, the water business has been called all of these things and more, and Sir Bevan sits at the very heart of the scandal.

I already know he has no integrity. Bevan refused countless invitations throughout his years at the EA to meet with my friend, clean-water campaigner Feargal Sharkey, to explain himself. Had he a shred of decency, he would have resigned his knighthood the day after episode 1 of Dirty Business hit TV screens a couple of weeks back, because after years of swerving public accountability, for Bevan at least, the game is finally up.

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Matthew Wright is the presenter of Weekend Breakfast with Matthew Wright on LBC and Vice President of Wild Trout Trust and WildFish.

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