Welsh Water has opened a registration window for farmers, growers and land managers in Wales and their drinking water catchments on the border in England to dispose of any unwanted pesticides and herbicides as part of their free and confidential PestSmart project.

The scheme is available throughout Welsh Water’s operating area which includes parts of Herefordshire as well as Wales.

PestSmart encourages people to consider ‘smarter’ ways of weed, pest and disease control that do not impact on people, water or wildlife.

Ian Christie, Managing Director of Water Services at Welsh Water, said: “Our routine raw water monitoring programme has detected increasing traces of pesticides in areas we have never seen them before. While these levels are too low to pose a risk to those drinking the water, they are enough to risk breaching rigorous drinking water standards so we want to work with farmers, growers and land managers to take action to address this issue together.”

It is completely confidential and available for a limited time.See this week’s paper for more stories like this, available in shops and as a Digital Edition now.