A river was the lifeblood of a town. Then it burst into flames

Pollution from agricultural runoff and sewage overflow is choking waterways the length and breadth of the nation.

Last week’s £3.3 million-fine imposed on Thames Water is just a drop in the ocean when it comes to holding companies to account for years of neglect while executives cashed huge bonuses.

Cleaning them up is a mammoth task, and one that should be a priority for this and future governments.

However, it has been done before.

There was a time, not so long ago, one of our rivers was so polluted it caught fire.

The River Don, which springs in the Pennines and winds its way 69 miles until it merges with the River Ouse, was once a vital transport artery for the towns through which it flowed. One such town was Sheffield, a little sister to Leeds but a big player during Britain’s industrial era.

Iron and steel led the charge, but coal mining also thrived and quarries surrounded the city, providing limestone to build the Houses of Parliament 170 miles south.

Yet still industrial and residential waste poured into the river, until one day, it caught fire. A picture in the Sheffield Star captured the moment as flames danced across the water, licking at the factory walls that bordered the channel. 

‘When you looked into the water it was jet black,’ said environmental campaigner Stuart Crofts, speaking to the Yorkshire Post. ‘There was that much oil on top that it would literally burn.’

By the 1980s however, Mr Crofts and other passionate locals gathered together and vowed to make a change. New legislation allowed them to see exactly what firms were discharging into the river, and armed with evidence of a litany of failures, took the polluters to court.

Their campaigning worked, and slowly but surely, the river came back to life – so much so that in 2021, for the first time in almost two centuries, juvenile salmon were seen swimming through Sheffield.

But the Don is far from the only river to have fallen into such a state.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River caught fire at least 12 times between 1868 and 1969. The final blaze, on Sunday, June 22, has over time gained legendary status.

A year later however, the burgeoning environmental movement of the 1970s stepped up a gear following the country’s first Earth Day. Across the US, people were galvanised, outraged by the damage to nature they witnessed at every turn.

And in December 1970, the Cuyahoga River fire had its moment. In a way. 

Time Magazine chose the fire as its cover story, but with no photographs in existence, it published a picture from a 1952 fire under the headline ‘Our Ecological Crisis’ – and also got the date of the 1969 fire wrong.

However, both the Cuyahoga and the Don show rivers’ remarkable ability to recover, when those doing and regulating the polluting are held to account.

MORE : Your water bills could rise by up to 40% to cope with sewage crisis

MORE : Thames Water chief executive stands down after giving up bonus over sewage spills

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.