CONTINUOUS water quality monitoring will become a reality on the River Wye, thanks to a partnership between a sports club and a local wastewater treatment firm.

Ross Rowing Club linked with Haigh Environmental at a riverside gathering to launch the ‘WaQA’ buoy, which floats in the river and continuously measures key water health indicators – such as turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH and temperature – feeding the data into an online platform that provides instant comprehensible analysis.

The Friday evening event, which was attended by Hereford and South Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman, Ross-on-Wye town mayor Cllr Sarah Freer and over 100 local stakeholders, also saw a new commemorative rowing four christened Clearwater as part of a new Ross RC sponsorship partnership with Haigh.

Supplied by AquaWatch Solutions, the buoy device will enable a better understanding of Wye water quality, at a time where communities have never been more concerned about pollution and river health.

Haigh and Ross RC have committed to sharing the data with Ross Town Council and other groups, and plan to make the results available to the wider community through a public page.

The project is part of a partnership launched at the 2025 Ross Regatta, where the two organisations teamed up to raise awareness of the importance of protecting the UK’s waterways from pollution.

Haigh Environmental – part of Haigh Group – has been headquartered in Ross-on-Wye since the 1950s, and provides wastewater solutions nationwide, including package-treatment plants – an environmentally-friendly alternative to septic tanks.

Haigh’s Ross base also manufactures wastewater screens, a crucial component in larger water treatment systems, and waste equipment for the NHS, employing more than 50 people.

Haigh Environmental Director Luke Shepherd said: “As a company, we are genuinely motivated by the desire to improve water quality in communities across the UK, and particularly here in the beautiful Wye Valley.

"This buoy brings cutting-edge technology to Ross, helping provide the rowing club and other groups with information about water quality right on their doorstep.”

Haigh Environmental also supported Ross RC with the installation of a pump station for the club’s main building and campsite in 2022, ensuring the highest quality wastewater treatment for the club’s base, and will work with them to raise awareness about water quality among its members and wider stakeholders, including at regattas and other events.

The late Nigel Shepherd and the Shepherd family, who still run Haigh, have been longstanding supporters of the club, with the firm committing to a new sponsorship deal to support the club’s activities.

Ross Rowing Club chair Jonathan Preece said: “We have been extremely fortunate to secure sponsorship from Haigh Environmental.

“As a growing club, their support will enable us to further develop both our top-level rowing, and right across the board from junior to senior level, in both a competitive and social context.

"It's also great to be working with a forward-thinking local company that is striving to improve the quality of our river.”

MP Mr Norman – father of World U23 gold medal rower Noah, and himself an oarsman at school and college – has championed improvements in the river's quality.

And he told the gathering: "The fantastic thing about this event is that we bring together so many beautiful things... the incredible town of Ross-on-Wye, the beautiful River Wye, which maintains its beauty despite all of the difficulties it’s had...

“And it also brings together the rowing club, one of the great community organisations in the county... and I particularly take my hat off to the Shepherd family, Luke, Nigel and of course my predecessor (as MP) Colin Shepherd.

“What they’ve given us today through this new extraordinary innovation, is a thing which looks like a mine, and literally is, a mine of information about the river, and I hope it will help us to think more carefully and thoughtfully about what’s happening to it and the stress it’s under.”

Ross-on-Wye Mayor, Cllr Sarah Freer, said: “The River Wye is integral to the town of Ross-on-Wye; in fact, it’s the reason the town was formed here.

"We all enjoy the beauty of the river and use it for sport and leisure. We’re lucky that we have one of the most easily accessible riverside walks anywhere along the Wye and attract visitors from far and wide to share in its splendour. It’s important to all of us that the river is healthy.”

Abi Croutear-Foy, AquaWatch Solutions CEO, added: “Continuous monitoring only changes anything if the people who live, row and walk beside a river can understand what it is telling them.

"We were founded to democratise water quality science... and it's projects like this where we see the full value of the work we do, and we love it.”