A nature lover has been left 'devastated' by the sight of dying fish in what he now describes as nothing more than a 'puddle' of water where a pond once was. And Graeme Boyce told Bristol Live this isn't the first time that the Minery Ponds, near Nether Wood and the Charterhouse Outdoor Centre in Cheddar, has been left with little to no water.
Mr Boyce shared photographs of the pond's condition, which he visits every day when he's walking his dog and described the situation and the condition of the pond. He said: "This is soul destroying. There's rotting dead fish everywhere. This was supposed to be an Area of Natural Beauty."
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Mr Boyce said he reported this to the Environment Agency on July 22 and has been taking photos of the pond since August 5. A Bristol Water spokesperson told Bristol Live: “We have no arrangements in place that would impact this particular pond. We suspect this has occurred due to very low groundwater levels across the Mendips. We used to have a well source nearby in Priddy but this was decommissioned and the abstraction licence revoked in 2005. We also do have a naturally fed spring source with a small treatment works at Charterhouse.
"However, this was affected by a fire in 2018 and is in the process of being rebuilt. In any case, we do not actively pump out water at this location, we use what is available from the naturally occurring spring.
“Our Cheddar Reservoir (sometimes also known as Axbridge Reservoir) is fed by water coming from the Mendips but again this is naturally fed by springs that emerge in the Cheddar Gorge. We do not pump water out of the ground and can only divert to the reservoir water that is not required to meet minimum flows in the downstream River Axe.”
Mr Boyce said on his most recent visit down to the pond yesterday evening, it was "really smelly" due to "lots of dead fish". He added: "There's still some wildfowl ducks, and moorhens on there but this is the second time it has happened.
"The first time this happened, I believe, was about four or five years ago, maybe a bit longer, but there were huge carp in there which had been in there for years and years and years. We took a photograph of our son holding up one of these dead carp which was on the bank."
Mr Boyce described how he had managed to get in touch with someone from the Environment Agency the previous time this had happened and, within half a day he says, the pond had "refilled with water with the smaller fish repopulating the waters there".
He added that this time round, he was told by the Environment Agency that there had been nobody available in the area, saying: "The man I spoke to on the phone told me that they were so stretched, the closest person to us was in Christchurch in Dorset, but that he would give Bristol Water a ring and see if he could get anything done," he said. "But nothing was ever done."
A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: "Minery Pond is a privately-owned spring-fed pond and the Environment Agency received reports of low water levels in the pond late last month.
"On contacting the owners, we were told there was no issue with distressed fish and we therefore did not attend. Bristol Water have not abstracted water from the area of Minery Pond for several years."
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