Last week it was widely reported that Rishi Sunak was considering scrapping vital legal protections for rivers across the UK in order to allow tens of thousands of new homes to be built.

For our precious rivers and the wildlife that live in them, it’s a move that risks turning a bad situation into a disaster.

The ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules in question mean that all housing developers are legally required to make sure new estates they build do not result in increased levels of phosphate and nitrate pollution in nearby watercourses.

Scrapping the rules would result in more sewage and wastewater entering our rivers, killing precious wildlife.

River pollution was a key issue at this year’s local elections and for good reason: the public has been appalled at the volume of raw sewage that is regularly pumped into our rivers from storm overflows by water companies.

Last year alone, raw sewage spilled into our rivers more 300,000 times.

However, while pollution from sewage treatment plants might grab the headlines, there are other forms of pollution that can harm our rivers just as much that we hear a lot less about.

Every time we use the kitchen sink or flush the toilet we are adding nutrients to the system; industry and farming also have a huge impact.

The problem is that when we put too many nutrients into rivers and streams, these nutrients can fuel explosive growth of algae in the water – known as ‘algal blooms’: you’ve probably seen these dense, yellow-green mats of fibres on the tops of ponds of streams in the summer.

When these blooms happen, the algae suck all the oxygen out of the water and block out the sunlight, stopping other plants from growing and killing off the other life in the water.

We call this process ‘eutrophication’.

The nutrient neutrality rules mean that planning permission can’t be granted for developments that would make polluted water bodies even worse.

This means that local authorities need to improve the state of water bodies before they can grant permission for developments that would add to the level of nutrients.

The onus is therefore on developers to work out the nutrient output of their developments and how they are going to deal with those nutrients.

The people who want to get rid of these vital rules say that they are stopping the building of new homes, but the only developments these rules are stopping are ones that would pollute our rivers which already desperately need improving.

According to the Government’s own figures, no river in England is in good ecological and chemical status.

You would think that this would cause the Government and relevant agencies to spring into action to tackle the problem - yet only in December, the Environment Agency pushed back the target date to clean up our rivers by a staggering 36 years.

This means ours rivers won’t be in good health until 2063 - too late for nature, and certainly too late for those of us who would love to be able to swim in clean rivers before we die.

If the Government scraps nutrient neutrality rules, even a target date as unambitious as 2063 could become unrealistic.

We need to keep nutrient neutrality, scale up nature-based solutions to facilitate its implementation, bring forward targets to put our rivers into good health and reduce our own consumption of water.

The answer is certainly not to make it easier for developers to pollute our rivers.

The state of our rivers will be a key battle ground in next year’s general election, and we need a level of political ambition that matches the public’s disgust at the state of our rivers.

We can’t wait until 2063. Nature can’t wait until 2063.

Join our call for action and sign our #Nature2030 petition today.