When the Drinkable Rivers campaigners Li An Phoa and Maarten van der Schaaf passed through Kingston and Richmond on their walk from the source of the River Thames they realised that their visit and campaign couldn't have been more timely.

Thames Water are in the process of planning to abstract water from the Thames just above Teddington Weir and replace the abstracted water with treated effluent.

Li An and Maarten's walk has involved sampling and testing the river water along the way for 28 separate indicators of river water health.

Li An and Maarten dropped into Kingston Hive to talk about their campaign and talked about some of the environmental dangers to our rivers, including harmful chemicals that even persist in treated effluent and whose full impacts we are unaware of.

Green Party councillor and London Assembly election candidate Chas Warlow met the campaigners in Kingston and said: "I wholeheartedly support the Drinkable Rivers campaign - it is vitally important that we clean up our rivers and prevent their routine pollution.

One fact that I found out at Li An and Maarten's talk was truly awful: a cigarette butt dropped in the river pollutes 500 litres of water. We really need to educate and campaign strongly for cleaner rivers."

You can find out more about Li An and Maarten's walk and the Drinkable Rivers campaign at https://drinkablerivers.org/what-we-do/river-walks/drinkable-thames-2023/.