A tributary of the River Yarty has become the focus of another avoidable farm pollution case, after Exeter Magistrates Court ordered D I & R Dyer, the partnership behind Crawley Farm at Yarcombe in Devon, to pay £19,468 following two slurry-related incidents. The total combines a £6,600 fine, a £2,000 victim surcharge and £7,368 in costs for the partnership, plus a further £2,500 fine and £1,000 surcharge for partner Derek Dyer, 76. (gov.uk) For Eco Current readers, the size of the bill is only part of the story. The Environment Agency said the farm had already received advice and warnings on multiple occasions, which means this was not a one-off lapse but a repeat test of whether river rules are being enforced early enough, and firmly enough, to prevent damage. (gov.uk)

The first incident began with a public report on 1 May 2024, after slurry and manure were spread across bare soil on five rented fields at Street Ash in Somerset. Environment Agency officers found the land was already saturated, with run-off moving into a ditch and then into a tributary of the River Yarty; their investigation found the fields had been saturated with slurry for three weeks during April and May. (gov.uk) Officers described the watercourse as brown, smelling of slurry and showing high ammonia levels. That matters because the Farming Rules for Water are explicit: organic manure applications must be planned around crop and soil need, weather and pollution risk, and must not be spread on waterlogged ground. (gov.uk)

The second incident, on 20 May 2025, was detected after monitoring equipment showed high ammonia levels in the River Yarty. When officers visited, they found slurry being pumped from a pipe directly onto a field instead of into a slurry store, while silage effluent was also escaping from clamps and reaching the same tributary. (gov.uk) By that stage, the tributary was covered with a thick layer of sewage fungus, and the Environment Agency concluded the pollution had harmed aquatic invertebrates. Inspectors also found a pile of farmyard manure less than 10 metres from the watercourse with no collection in place for run-off, despite official guidance stating manure must not be stored within 10 metres of inland freshwaters. (gov.uk)

What sharpens this case is its history. Derek Dyer had already received a community order in May 2024 after a makeshift slurry store built from farmyard manure collapsed, contaminating a private water supply and polluting a stream, and the latest prosecution also referred to a further conviction in 2009. (gov.uk) The court also noted that a slurry store granted permission in January 2025 had still not been built by the time of the latest hearing. In practical terms, that turns this from a local farm management problem into a wider accountability question: how many warnings should pass before the basic infrastructure needed to keep waste out of rivers is finally in place? (gov.uk)

The River Yarty case lands in a much bigger national picture. The Rivers Trust says no single stretch of river in England is in good overall health, while official river basin planning guidance states that agricultural diffuse pollution has a large and often cumulative impact on the water environment. (theriverstrust.org) Seen in that light, rules on slurry, silage and manure are not administrative extras. Current Defra and Environment Agency guidance, updated on 4 February 2026, says land managers must assess pollution risks, check weather and soil conditions, avoid spreading on waterlogged land, and keep stored manure away from freshwaters. (gov.uk)

There is a clear route to prevention, and it is not technically mysterious. Government guidance points farmers towards nutrient planning, soil testing, calibrated equipment and enough storage capacity to avoid spreading when fields are too wet, while broader river plans back a mix of advice, incentives, monitoring and enforcement rather than waiting for damage to appear downstream. (gov.uk) That solution-focused approach matters for farming as well as wildlife. Cleaner handling of slurry protects soils, reduces wasted nutrients and lowers the risk of expensive enforcement later on, which is why support for better storage and better timing should sit alongside prosecution for repeat failures. (gov.uk)

One encouraging detail in this case is that a member of the public helped trigger the first investigation. On rivers under growing pressure, that kind of local vigilance still counts, especially when paired with monitoring equipment and regulators willing to follow through. (gov.uk) This ruling will not restore the affected tributary on its own. But it does set out a workable standard for what comes next: build the storage that has already been approved, keep manure and slurry away from watercourses, and treat repeat pollution as a warning sign that should lead to faster action, not another season of avoidable damage. (gov.uk)