The Welland around Stamford has been suffering from a spate of fly-tipping, rubbish-dumping and vandalism problems recently.

The summer months bring a lot of events and people onto the Town Meadows and these unfortunately tend to generate large quantities of litter, some of which ends up in the river. At this time of the year, the sluggish flow means that all of this detritus gets trapped in weed and up against overhanging tree branches. It also sees an increase in incidents of fly-tipping and the dumping of things such as supermarket trolleys.

The river area immediately adjacent to the Albert Footbridge in Water Street suffered from all three problems over the past few weeks, so the local Rivercare team arranged a clean-up evening on Friday 23rd July. A team of ten volunteers arrived at 6:30pm and were joined by local people in an effort to remove three supermarket trolleys, a discarded mattress and a quantity of general litter from the area.

The event went off very well and all of the major items were removed and disposed of, as was a quantity of other rubbish.

This proved to a timely intervention, because the local paper, The Stamford Mercury, carried a front page story the following week, highlighting the problems caused to wildlife by the dumping of litter in the river. It also featured an RSPCA report of a swan which had to be rescued after becoming entangled in carelessly abandoned fishing line.

There is now a growing outcry in the town against littering in the river and the Trust will be working with the Rivercare group and members of Stamford Town Partnership Urban Group to formulate plans for further clean-ups and ways of discouraging further dumping.

If you spot any serious problems with litter or dumping in the river, let us know about it by filling in our River Problems report, which can be found here.