Summer 2025 put the River Mole under real pressure. Following the driest spring in over a century, June and August brought parched conditions and record heatwave days. Normally this would mean rising pollution and stressed aquatic life — but a very wet July, with nearly double the usual rainfall, diluted the river just enough to avert a crisis. Our citizen science monitoring shows this was a near-miss. Phosphate levels dipped slightly compared with 2024, but more than 70% of results were still
