On Friday 22nd June the Green party-sponsored Coffee House Discussion at Star Anise Cafe in Stroud asked is there a water crisis?

Photo: Julian Jones and Roger Budgeon with toilet - more photos here

The informative evening started with Martin Whiteside, Parliamentary candidate for the Green party and an International Aid and development worker, who set the scene with a look internationally at the problems: during the 2 hours of the Coffee House Discussion he noted that some 300 people died around the world from poor water. He also shared experiences of his work in other countries like during a trip to Afghanistan where a village had been burnt to the ground by a neighbouring village over a dispute about water.

Julian Jones, from Water 21 shared some of his projects with sustainable solutions to managing out water and sewage including examples locally and a project in Sudan based on work done in Stroud. He also shared his work with Cranfield University looking at health implications of sewage in our water - many millions of litres of sewage escapes into our waterways and he talked about the serious health implications of this.

Paul Munns and Roger Budgeon from the Green Shop in Bisley then gave a presentation about what could be done in homes to use water better - particularly roof water. A toilet that only uses a fraction of the water use of others was brought into the cafe as part of their demonstration.

Last up was Philip Booth, a local District councillor and Secretary of the Ruscombe Brook Action Group which is looking at sustainable solutions along the Ruscombe Brook. He talked of how the group had learnt over the last two years about the many issues relating to water quality, the numerous meetings, a conference, 2 local seminars, talks to schools and local groups, clean-ups and a local school doing water sampling. He noted much has improved by working with organisations and that there have been none of the major incidents of sewage getting into the brook in recent months. He also noted there is currently a £3000 grant to look at the next stage to improve water quality and biodiversity and a MSc student from Gloucestershire University has just embarked on a project to help with this.

Martin Whiteside said: "It was a fascinating evening - we need to move from our 'flush and forget' attitude to treating water as the wonderful resource it is - at the moment we allow sewage discharges into our brooks, we develop expensive energy-intensive sewage treatments when solutions like reed beds can be cheaper, more effective and more sustainable and we have built homes without water saving measures and in flood plains, yet we know climate change will bring many challenges in terms of drought and floods."

The talk was then followed by lots of questions and comments, while all enjoyed cakes and coffee from the Star Anise café. Next Discussion: Friday 28th September: Is Capitalism Sustainable? 7.30 to 9.30pm at Star Anise Arts Cafe at the Painswick Inn, Gloucester Street, Stroud.

More info: Martin Whiteside: 01453 757874