The Metropolis

Art stunt dyes the river Lea green. Upstream, 100s of fish are choking to death

Mike Pollitt | Wednesday 31 July, 2013 11:49

Here’s a picture of the River Lea dyed green as part of the Open East festival at the Olympic park last weekend.

Here’s a picture of dead fish in the same river. The fish suffocated when the oxygen levels dropped after pollution was washed off nearby roads and into the water during a storm early last week.

The green dye from the art event did NOT kill the fish.

It’s very important that the artists don’t get blamed for killing the fish because they did not kill fish.

The reality is much worse. The fish were killed by “normal” pollution washed off the roads. In other words, it could happen again and probably will.

About the art

There is more in this combination of events than mere juxtaposition. What Bompas and Parr, the artists behind the greening, have achieved, accidentally, unknowingly, is a piece of meaningful modern public art.

What better way to highlight the pollution of the city’s rivers, a pollution so sustained that raw shit from the city’s sewers overflows into its rivers almost every time it rains, than by literally repeating that pollution in the name of art? This isn’t art trying to symbolise the human pollution of rivers. This isn’t art trying to represent, or to abstract, the human pollution of rivers. This is art in which humans literally pour foreign substances into the city’s actual rivers.

That to me is something quite profound.

About the death

Thames 21, charity of London’s waterways, have covered this event extensively. Here’s an excerpt from their explanation of why the river Lea filled with dead fish, eels, and more last week.

“The hot weather will have lowered Dissolved Oxygen (DO) levels, and the lack of rain for two weeks meant large amounts of pollutants had built up on the roads. On Monday [22nd July], the Lea was teetering on the brink. The pollution swept into the Lea by the rain on Monday pushed it over the edge. The road run-off contained oil, copper, lead, and zinc from vehicles plus grit and dirt. This tide of pollution caused DO levels in the Lea Navigation to drop to zero and in the channel of the Lea to the east of Hackney Marsh to less than 10%. Fish can’t survive in conditions like this. It turned the river dark grey, eels crawled out of the water to escape, while thousands of other fish died.”

They have ideas about how to stop this happening, including intercepting the pollution from the major nearby roads before it hits the rivers.

More on that, and more details about the causes of last week’s massacre, can be found here:

Thames 21 on Twitter
Thames 21 on Facebook
Love the Lea on Facebook

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