It’s all happening in Media City. Just a few days after Nick Carter’s big lunchbreak trout hit the blogosphere, ITV News has aired this 2-minute local spot charting the Irwell’s recovery over the past 30 years, thanks largely to the (uncredited) Mersey Basin Campaign.
Chub, trout and several Salford Friendly Anglers are briefly interviewed…
This is a miracle… I never thought in my lifetime I’d ever see a fish in this river, it’s improved a thousand percent…
… and as we watched we found ourselves wondering if the prospect of scenes like these were playing through Michael Heseltine’s mind when he looked out over the filthy Mersey system after the Toxteth riots in 1981, and decided something truly radical had to be done to link community cohesion, urban regeneration and whole-catchment river restoration?
In the end it took a riot, plus 30 years’ hard work and at least £1billion of investment, but on the Irwell, Tame, Bollin, Goyt, Sett, Etherow and other rivers, the Mersey Basin Campaign’s payoff is here for all to see.
