The University of Southampton's new water pollution projects

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) recently awarded £900,000 in funding to a Southampton University project to design, build and test devices which can radically improve our ability to measure water pollutants.

The funding comes as part of a £12 million NERC investment in projects across the country to help assess the state of UK waterways, habitats, soil and air.

This scheme comes at a time of rising national and local concern about the state of our waterways.

Recently, The Echo reported that recent tests of the Itchen River had found levels of E. coli ten times what is considered safe.

In 2023, Southern Water was responsible for 317,285 hours of sewage spills, more than double the figure from the previous year.

The University of Southampton’s new research is split into two areas.

One, led by Professor Xize Niu, will develop a low-cost sensor which can monitor and report, in near real time, nutrient levels in rivers, lakes, wastewater plants and fish farms.

Professor Niu said: “Current instruments for this kind of monitoring are expensive to buy and run.

"They can be unreliable and generally aren’t capable of tracking more than one nutrient at a time.

"Our project hopes to change this, and we are excited to…tackle the pollution problems which lead to nutrient enrichment and algal blooms.”

The other branch of the research will be led by Dr Adrian Nightingale, and seeks to create a new kind of sampler for detecting organic chemicals, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides and industrial products.

Dr Nightingale said: “Organic contaminants pose a very real risk to both the health of the natural environment and all of us who use it. We aim to deliver new ways to detect them, in a more efficient and effective manner.”

Commenting on this new funding, Dr Ian Williams, Director of Strategic Partnerships for the NERC, said that the investment “will help to deliver a step-change in environmental monitoring, modelling and analysis".