Mersey Rivers Trust are working to help protect and improve water quality in Upper Weaver Catchment in Cheshire by working with farms in the Darley Brook, Ash Brook, Valley Brook and Englesea Brook catchments.

This project, funded by the Environment Agency WEIF programme and The Bentley Environmental Foundation, aims to provide farmers with free farm businsess advice and a Farm Water Management Plan. Through conversations with the farmer, and visits to the farm yards and fields, a Water Management Plan is created that will give recommendations and advice on new opportunities for managing surface water, runoff, slurry, livestock and more.

Following the creation of a Farm Water Management Plan there will also be the potential for grant funding to implement some of the recommendations outlined in the plan.

If you would like to learn more about this opportunity to improve your farm business, and help the environment please contact us.

To learn more about our work with farms, and for updates on upcoming events, webinars and funding available to support your farm business please take a look at the latest edition of our Farm Funding and Training Newsletter.

The Mersey Rivers Trust has established a Water Friendly Farming group led by a sub-group of the Alt Crossens Catchment Partnership, including representatives from the Environment Agency, National Farmers Union (NFU) and Natural England’s Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) service. The group is focussing on engagement and communication of “water friendly farming” to the agricultural community in the Alt-Crossens catchment.

The aim is to enable better farm practice having less impact on watercourses, flooding and water availability. This is via engagement aimed at Alt-Crossens farmers, showcasing exemplar case studies and providing farmers with information on topics such as best practice sustainable farming, Catchment Sensitive Farming and grants available to farmers.

The aim is improving farm management, sustainability and use of interventions to reduce nitrates and phosphates entering the watercourses as well as water storage and irrigation techniques. We are working with the farmers to help them find funding and implement interventions. Farmers are invited to a series of workshops and webinars specifically designed for this project, to demonstrate good practice and innovative techniques.

The Alt-Crossens is designated as a priority catchment for water resource. The land drainage is an issue and the catchment suffers from both flooding and drought at various times of the year, both of which are challenges to farmers. The project enables farmers to share key challenges and issues in preventing pollution and managing water resources, and see solutions in action.

We provide a communications vehicle to raise awareness and encourage collaboration, with the aim of finding new solutions to improving water quality and water resource management in the catchment that command the broad support of the agricultural community and wider stakeholders.

We explore options for preventing pollution of watercourses and for better sharing of water resources during drought conditions through discussion with various abstraction groups (agriculture, commercial/industrial, drainage management and public water supply), including by drawing on case studies from other places to see whether similar arrangements could work in the Alt Crossens catchment.