A new group called Stop Ure Pollution (SUP) was unanimously voted into existence at a meeting at Leyburn Methodist Church Hall on Tuesday evening.

More than 70 people attended the meeting as they were so concerned about the pollution of the Ure.

The chair of the interim committee of the "Health of the River Ure" group, Prof Richard Loukota, said the aims of SUP are to stop the discharges of raw sewage when storm conditions are not occurring, to upgrade water treatment facilities and to identify pollution caused by run-off from farms.

One attendee asked how the group could bring about change when agencies such as Defra and the Environment Agency were so under-funded and under-manned. "You can collect as much data as you like but when you look at Defra they don’t have the resources because of the cutbacks," he said.

Prof Loukota replied that Ofwat has the power to impose unlimited fines. "They need to be pushed to do so," he said.

Sheila Toper from Aysgarth said: "We have got to start somewhere and the more voices raised the more successful we will be."

When asked how soon data could be collected, Charlotte Simons of the Yorkshire Dales River Trust (YDRT) explained how volunteer citizen scientists could assist with sampling the river water throughout its length and from that data hot spots could be identified.

"The data collected by volunteers will be more specific and there will be far more testing along the river," she said. Along the Rivers Wharfe and Nidd, volunteers had tested between 30 and 40 sites she said. "That gives you a far greater picture of where the pollution might be coming in," she added.

Ms Simons explained the YDRT will now work with the SUP volunteers to identify testing sites, hold training days for volunteers and organise a date for the first sampling by the end of August.

Since a meeting about the health of the river on April 30, sponsored by the Association of Rural Communities, more than 40 people have volunteered to help with water sampling.

The cost of testing at an independent laboratory would be met by Yorkshire Water, Ms Simons said, with all the results being delivered directly to YDRT and SUP.

Prof Loukota pointed out that testing water samples was very expensive and it will take time for the new group to build up funds. He said he had attended Save Our Swale meetings to learn from them about setting up such a group.

Both he and Ms Simons emphasised that this needed to be a collaborative effort, working with not only Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency but also the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and other river groups, to be effective. This, Prof Loukota said, included parliamentary candidates.

He introduced two of those standing for election in Richmond and Northallerton, Liberal Democrat Daniel Callaghan and Kevin Foster of the Green Party, both of whom have included cleaning up rivers and seas in their aims.