WATER highlights to look out for in 2026

Keeping our supporters, volunteers, strategic partners and local community groups updated on what’s happening at WATER is vital. Here are a few of the highlights this year.

Our updated website has new content, easier navigation and online Membership and donation capability.

We have kept the familiar look and feel of the site, but improved the architecture to allow for ever-expanding content and made navigation more intuitive. Features like our Wildlife Gallery will be an ongoing feature and we will be adding video shorts which will build into a video gallery.

WATER will be at the Rivers and Moorland Festival this June in Ivybridge. Part of the National Park’s Dartmoor Dynamic Landscapes programme, WATER will have a riverside location for a family-friendly interactive exhibit called ‘Life on the Riverbed’ where people will be encouraged to spot and identify invertebrates that live in the river but are rarely seen. For most folk it will be a window into a whole new world.

The Team at WATER have been having workshops and Riverfly training with Simon Rundle who, apart from running the Ivybridge Brewery, is also Emeritus Professor of Marine Biology at Plymouth University. He has a wealth of knowledge which he is only too happy share. He brews a very fine pint too.

Collaboration with our local environmental groups

We never like to miss an opportunity for collaboration, so we will be inviting local community environmental groups who we support on their river cleans and Himalayan balsam culls to come and join us at the festival.

Our film about the Erme is well under way but we still have lot more to cover. We are planning to be ready for our first screenings in late autumn this year, when WATER will be touring communities in the catchment to show the film and talk about the many actions being taken across the Erme catchment to help the recovery of the river.

In this example, a team from Flete Field Labs are installing a leaky dam across one of the Erme’s feeder streams. The bags contain a wood chip and biochar substrate injected with mycelium which feeds off unwanted pollutants in the river such as phosphates and E. coli, thus acting as a filter.