20th Century
In 1939 the Mersey and Irwell Joint Committee was superseded by the Lancashire Rivers Board, but wartime conditions brought about further deterioration of the river. In 1951, the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act was passed and this board disappeared to be replaced by the Mersey River Board, which was replaced in turn by the Mersey and Weaver River Authority in 1965.
In 1946, there was serious flooding in Salford, caused by a bottleneck at a bend in the river at Strangeways, on the border with Manchester. Flooding had been a problem for hundreds of years, and, in 1946, the decision was made to straighten and widen the river to increase its capacity. Work started in 1951 but it was not until September 1970 that water first flowed through the Anaconda Cut. The total cost of the project was £2m.
In a question to the House of Commons in 1950 the Member of Parliament for Rossendale, Mr. Anthony Greenwood, highlighted the lamentable condition of the Irwell and one of its main tributaries, the River Roch:
Today I am afraid that fish in most of those rivers are virtually extinct. Anybody who stands today in the City of Manchester outside the Exchange Station and looks down at the noisome black water which flows beneath him would find it difficult to believe that any fish, or any other living creature, could ever have lived in what the Manchester Guardian has so rightly called that "melancholy stream"... I have had my differences with the British Field Sports Society, but I have nothing but admiration for the excellent series of reports on river pollution which have been prepared for that Society... and ventured to suggest that they should make a similar survey of the Rivers Irwell and Roach. These two rivers were covered by the third report; and very sorry reading it made. There are two passages in that report which I should like to read. The first says: "The banks are lined with factories, large and small, many of which take their water from the drainage of the hills forming the slopes of the river's valley, and discharge it as a polluted effluent, either into the small feeders, or the main river itself, so it may be said that no natural water normally enters the river from its cradle in the moors to its grave in the Manchester Ship Canal." The second quotation is one which I find still more appalling than the first. It is: "There are no fish in these rivers (apart from a very occasional tributary), no insects, no weeds, no life of any kind except sewage fungus, nothing but chemicals and any dirt which cannot be put to profitable use. Sewage effluents (and, being usually very good, they are the most encouraging feature of the appalling situation) are hailed with delight as being the purest water which the rivers hold." The full importance of that statement will be realised when I remind hon. Members of the frequency with which residents in Bacup, Ramsbottom, Manchester and Salford are subjected to flooding from the waters of the Irwell.
In 1951, it was announced that flood defence works were to be carried out on the stretch of the river passing through Lower Broughton between Cromwell Bridge and Gerald Road Bridge, although local property owners and shopkeepers were outraged at being asked to bear part of the cost. Work on the 8-foot-thick (2.4 m) concrete wall did not get underway until June 1952 and was still only nearing completion when, in August 1957, nearby homes were threatened by flooding during heavy rain.
Read more about this topic: River Irwell, History