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Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project Community Catchment Management at Loweswater, Cumbria This booklet is dedicated to the memory of Danny Leck This publication was produced by Loweswater Care Project participants. It aims to document the LCP’s innovative ways of working, and to highlight the achievements and insights gained from understanding and acting collectively in Loweswater to address complex environmental issues. Main: Loweswater. Photo: Getmapping.com. Inset left: Danny Leck (middle) discussing new septic tanks with farmers, 2007. Covers: Photo:John Macfarlane Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project 1 Right: Installing the monitoring buoy on Loweswater. Photo: Stephen Maberly. Foreword Over the last 50 years or so, farming practices and indeed the way of life in rural areas have altered dramatically. So too has the environment in which these changes have played out. A number of years have passed since local people began to consider how to improve the water quality of Loweswater, beginning with eleven farmers working together, led by the late Danny Leck back in 2002. This booklet explains what has been attempted by local people working together with scientists and agencies since then and in the form of the Loweswater Care Project. It gives a voice to these diverse participants to show how they have collaborated and presents some of the findings that have come to the fore and the things they have achieved. It also considers what practical and viable ways forward there may be to better understand and act on complex environmental issues. Together, we carried out various surveys and monitoring programmes, recognising certain issues, some of which have been addressed. But it must be understood that bettering the quality of the lake will not be a quick fix. Kath Leck Right: The physical ‘catchment’ of Loweswater, a small lake in the English Lake District, is defined as the area within which water flows towards the lake. The catchment is delineated here by the red line. Photo: Lisa Norton. 2 Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project 3 Introducing Loweswater What one sees if one looks closely remain competitive. Like so many David Davies, at this lovely place is that - like other rural areas of Britain, the many rural areas in our highly local landscape is increasingly less Thackthwaite, modernised society - it harbours a a landscape of production, but Loweswater mass of seeming contradictions and rather one that is characterised by paradoxes. The lake, the land, the consumption – a landscape to be farms, the mountains, the rivers, consumed by occasional visitors, Life in Loweswater, for those the stone-walled fields, the sheep holidaymakers, and those who live fortunate enough to be able to live and the wild animals signify the here. there, is good. Loweswater is rurality of the catchment – a undoubtedly one of the most simple-looking rurality that is highly Loweswater is a small community beautiful valleys in England, with prized in the beautiful Lake District where some big issues are being stunning mountains, fast-running National Park. Yet in many respects played out. The Loweswater Care becks, rugged fells and the unique Loweswater is no less complex a Project has offered some insights sense of place that is associated place than a district of a large not only into the science and with “the Lakes”. Around 200 people metropolitan centre. As we shall ecology of Loweswater, but also reside in the parish (2001 Census), see later on in this publication, into some important cultural and with around a quarter of that issues of housing, work, population social issues of the day. There are number permanently resident in the and the environment constantly no easy solutions but there are physical catchment of Loweswater. raise challenges in this rural setting interesting and illuminating puzzles Despite its small size and relatively just as they do in our cities. and paradoxes around our remote locality, a wealth of local concerns. The LCP has shone some activities are enjoyed by For example, as for many rural light on these and allowed us to Loweswater residents – often in parishes today, very few residents think critically and positively about combination with nearby villages – are able to earn a living within the beautiful but paradoxical place from gardening clubs to rambling Loweswater. There has been some that is Loweswater. societies to local history development in tourism in the fraternities. parish (a hotel, local B&Bs, as well as a camping barn are thriving) Loweswater, like most rural providing some jobs, but there are settlements, has a complex few other services to be found here. social make-up, the people living Life in the valley relies heavily on here come from very varied the infrastructures of local towns backgrounds. Not so long that are within reach. Local property ago, the valley was a site of major prices reflect market desirability mining installations, and it was host and have the unfortunate effect of to textile, brewing, tanning, and pricing young local people with fulling industries and a diverse families out of the area. Forms of agriculture. Its people came from farming have changed quite both the near locality and from far radically in the last 60 years in the away across the UK and beyond. catchment and even beef and sheep Now, the social make-up of the farming, which have historically catchment is less determined by been important in the area, look working opportunities but the valley increasingly precarious as small still supports a diverse community. family-run businesses struggle to 4 Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project Right: Blue-green algae on Loweswater on the 18th February 2008. Photo: Judith Tsouvalis. Bottom: Loweswater. Photo: Lisa Norton. Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project 5 Loweswater’s blue- green algae - a matter of concern… Claire Waterton, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC), Department of Sociology, Lancaster University In the last ten years or so, algal Above: Blue-green blooms such as the ones seen on algae on Loweswater on the 18th February this page have become an 2008. increasingly frequent sight in Loweswater. These blooms are caused by blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) that under calm conditions can float to the surface of the lake. When blooming, they tend to form an oily scum that can cover much of the lake or, more commonly, can be pushed by the wind into one area of the lake. Blue-green algae are an indicator and a cause of poor water quality. More importantly, these microscopic organisms which are, in fact, bacteria, can potentially be toxic to animals and humans. 6 Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project Below: The problem of blue-green algae in the lake began to spark off a series of connections and activities. Blue green algae became a matter People’s reactions to of local concern in Loweswater in what appeared as a the early 1990s when it became clear that they: purely ‘physical’ problem • Marred the attraction of People reacted to what initially Loweswater for locals and appeared to be a primarily physical visitors, particularly when in problem in many different ways. bloom; • Could pose a danger to livestock • Scientists suggested that the and other animals (e.g. dogs) due chemical element, Phosphorus - to their potential toxicity; either from farm fertilisers, farm • Posed a potential danger to manures, farm slurry tanks or people swimming in the lake domestic septic tanks - was during and after a bloom; getting into the lake and ‘feeding’ • Scientists and locals worked • Signalled declining water quality; the blue-green algae. together to gain small grants to • Brought to the attention of the • Many local people as well as put in new septic tanks around Environment Agency the issue of agency representatives domestic and business properties pollution from farms and suspected farmers were to blame at the north end of the lake. households; for the appearance of the algae. • The owners of the lake, the • Alerted the Environment Agency • Loweswater farmers, in turn, National Trust, felt they had no to the likely failure of Loweswater rallied together as a group (the way of addressing this problem to meet new lake water quality Loweswater Improvement except to post warning signs standards under the European Project) under the leadership of around the lake. Water Framework Directive; and local farmer Danny Leck to • Began to sour relations between address issues they felt they the National Trust (owners of the could control. Farm soils were lake) and farmers (land-users sampled, the application of around the lake). fertiliser was adjusted according to soil sample results, new systems for the separation of rainwater and slurry/septic tanks were put in place on several farms. Dealing with Environmental Challenges Collectively: The Loweswater Care Project 7 The Loweswater Care Project The Loweswater Care Project (or LCP for short) was formed in 2008 to build on all the activities that were coming into being around the problem of blue-green algae in Loweswater. The rationale behind the LCP was to create a meeting-ground where local people, agencies, scientists and anyone who cared about Loweswater could come together on equal terms and pool their diverse knowledges and understandings of blue-green algae in order to identify possible causes and solutions. The forum was run following a number of simple principles that Lancaster University academics adopted from the work of a well-known philosopher of science, Bruno Latour. Prominent among these was the principle that all knowledges and expertise are valuable and open to debate, and that it is important to take disregarded views seriously.

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