Richard Battarbee suspected the real cause of the pollution was a sewage outflow further down the river run by Yorkshire Water, the region’s privatized water company. But when the government and Yorkshire Water refused to help, the residents of Ilkley turned to citizen science, research conducted by the general public. The UK's Environment Agency (EA), whose budget has been slashed from £120m to £48m since 2010, said it wasn’t able to investigate or even monitor