A BID has been launched for the River Wye to be given official bathing water status, to help ensure it is given resources to improve its water quality.

Ross-on-Wye Town Council has approved a motion, “to call on Herefordshire Council urgently to investigate seeking designation of appropriate stretches of the Wye to be officially identified as bathing water”.

While the summer saw large numbers of people swimming, canoeing and paddleboarding on the Wye, concerns have grown about the health of its water, with campaigners highlighting its brown colour and algal blooms, caused by phosphate pollution.

The government allows a beach or inland water to be officially identified as a bathing water if it can be shown to already in use and has facilities to enable this.

If successful, the Environment Agency must then put plans in place to monitor and protect it.

The local authority would also have to display information about the water quality during the bathing season of mid-May to the end of September.

Town councillor Jane Roberts, who proposed the bid, said: “This would add to the armoury that Herefordshire Council can use to raise the water quality of the Wye.

“If that doesn’t work, we as the town council could seek it for the stretch of the river passing through Ross.”

Britain’s bathing water designations are nearly all for coastal waters, but in Europe they are used much more for rivers, which as a result have higher water quality standards, she said.

However the West Yorkshire town of Ilkley was granted bathing water status for a stretch of the river Wharfe earlier this year, putting pressure on Yorkshire Water to reduce sewage discharges.

The parish council motion has been passed to Hereford City Council and other towns in the Wye valley to ask them to support the bid.

It also calls on Ross residents to sign a petition asking the English and Welsh governments to double the Environment Agency’s and Natural Resources Wales’s budgets so that they can better enforce existing legal protections for rivers.

The Gazette has highlighted several anti-pollution protests on the river this summer, and two weeks ago reported a sewage spill following rain beside the town’s riverside walk.

Wild swimming expert and pollution campaigner Angela Jones posted footage of a pipe discharging into the Wye saying: “Raw sewage pumping out below Ross Rowing Club today, toilet paper, sanitary towels… for over 1 1/2 hours.

“Ironic as with a photographer from the Telegraph doing an article on Wye pollution. Swans and ducks just below this outlet.

“This has to STOP. I have several videos. Reported straight away, and sent to MP and councillors as well as many others!”

Comments on the Ross-on-Wye Facebook page about the discharge included ‘disgusting’, ‘horrible’, ‘vile’ ’totally unacceptable’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘terrible’ and ‘grim’.

Angela, who hosts wild swimming and kayaking sessions at Symonds Yat and elsewhere, has become a prominent figure in the battle against pollution in the Wye and Usk, holding ‘Death of the Wye’ funeral processions, including a floating coffin, on the river in Ross and Monmouth this summer, attended by nearly 400 people.

Campaigners say the river is being choked by phosphates and nitrates from agricultural and human sewage that turn the water murky with algal blooms.

A month-long source to sea ‘Walking With The Wye’ pilgrimage, which came through Ross in July, also highlighted the pollution problem.

‘Pilgrims’ on the 155-mile-long relay trek from the Plynlimon source to the Severn Estuary held a ‘People’s Assembly’, a centuries old tradition, beside Ross Rowing Club, attended by walkers, town residents and county councillors.