My TL;DR:

The Environment Agency and the UK government have failed to protect the River Wye from catastrophic decline by allowing pollution from industrial chicken farming to saturate the land and devastate the protected river, a legal challenge is to argue.

Farming rules for water state it is an offence for farmers to apply to the land fertilisers or organic manures at a level that exceeds what the land can naturally absorb. But a loophole in the law states farmers must abide by these rules unless it is impractical to do so.

A judicial review brought by the group River Action is being heard in the high court in Cardiff. River Action says this loophole in the law is allowing poultry waste from 25 million chickens intensively farmed in the catchment to poison the Wye.

River Action said in court documents submitted to the judicial review that it was not disputed that the Wye, one of the most celebrated rivers in the UK, was in ecological crisis.

“In recent years [the River Wye] has been blighted by algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water[.] The algal blooms are agreed to be caused by excess nutrients, nitrogen and especially phosphorus … It is not disputed that by far the largest single contributor to that nutrient overload is agricultural runoff.”

Charles Watson, the founder of River Action, said the loophole meant the river was almost dead as “huge quantities of manure have been allowed to be dumped in the Wye”.