Meanwood Beck

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The Meanwood Beck is a stream in Yorkshire, England, which flows into the River Aire. It is one of a dwindling number of habitats for the indigenous European crayfish, a crustacean threatened by the larger, American signal crayfish, which has already colonised the River Aire. It is reasonably clean now but it use to contain visible sewage from the surrounding housing estates. Decades of neglect had allowed elderly sewage and storm water systems to intermingle, and the old Leeds City Council Water Authority had resisted previous campaigns to upgrade the system on cost grounds.

Things did not change overnight when responsibility for sewage services was transferred to the private utility, Yorkshire Water in 1988, although almost immediately pressure groups sprang up to watch over the new company. "Eye on the Aire", and "C. O. M. B." (Clean Out Meanwood Beck), were two. Both groups were openly hostile to the new company, and managed to give them much bad publicity.

Councils, especially those with large single-party majorities like Leeds, can ignore this sort of thing, but not private companies, and Yorkshire Water responded with a massive investment programme, which included local sewage system renewal. The river markedly improved, and in 1998 even the pressure groups recognised that Yorkshire Water was having a dramatic effect on river quality and gave them awards.

Unfortunately, the beck had to bear yet more unnecessary damage at the hands of an irresponsible government organisation when over 10,000 litres of oil was released into it on 29th March 1999. A fuel oil tank at Bodington, a University of Leeds hall of residence, leaked via an open storm water drain into the beck. A frantic clean-up effort dealt with much of it, but serious environmental damage was done. Between half and 90% of the crayfish died, although numbers are now slowly recovering.

The beck was a source of water for the village of Headingley and two of its earliest bridges led straight to it. The beck has shrunk considerably over the years as water is collected in the many drains in the centre of one of Britain's largest cities, and gives hope to the future of Britain's waterways and the European crayfish.