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The Wantage & Grove Herald
Mapping out plan for giant reservoir
By
Phil Clee
THAMES Water managers faced a damp squib response to its first
public attempt to win over the hearts and minds of people for a new £1bn
reservoir on farmland near Abingdon.
A public consultation in the town's Abbey Hall was preceded by
several hours of heavy rain, which brought town centre rush-hour traffic to a
standstill and resulted in only a trickle of interested spectators visiting the
exhibition during the morning.
Company officials admitted that during the first couple of hours
of the public display, only ten individuals wandered in to inspect their
documents and plans, but they stressed they hoped for a livelier response later.
Thames Water, the most leak-prone supplier in England, was
meeting the public and its detractors for the first time over the proposed
building of the country's largest fully embanked reservoir for 25 years,
measuring four square miles.
The project will tower above the otherwise flat farmland west of
the villages of Drayton and Steventon, between the A34 and the A338 road to
Wantage and Grove.
The deadline for completion of the massive project - three times
the size of Farmoor reservoir and with just under half the volume of Lake
Windermere - is scheduled for 2018.
Dave Cook, the company's water resources manager, said the stage
one plans on show were a far cry from those originally aired some 16 years ago.
He said: "We have done a lot of work on water efficiency and
water leakage, and have now taken this into account, but we believe we want a
major new resource.
"We've got at least one million people coming into the South East
and so we need that much more water to cope with this major demand."
Mr Cook insisted that the proposals being put forward were not
the same as those first debated in the early 1990s.
"We started with a clean sheet of paper and with a whole new team
of consultants on board," he said. "We needed it then and we need it more now."
Brian Eastoe, a 72-year-old retired field property manager for
the Mobil Oil company, was one of the first through the door.
He said: "This consultation is the first time anyone has seen the
alternative sites to the one at Steventon.
"It's now a private company, with shareholders asking for huge
profits, and they're planning to buy up properties at a 'blighted' value."
Mr Eastoe, who lives at Sutton Wick, said: "My advice to people
is to go and see a solicitor and argue the case for the 'Stokes Principle',
which means you are entitled to the residual value of the land - in other words,
it should be valued as part of the site of a multi-million-pound reservoir and
not as blighted land.
"If you owned a paddock and Tesco came along wanting it for a new
superstore, you wouldn't sell it as paddock, would you?
"This is going to disrupt the whole area, and mainly the water
will go to Swindon. I think it's ridiculous that they will use compulsory
purchase orders to buy land at agricultural prices, simply to make more money
for private shareholders.
"I feel there should be a national grid for water, just as there
is for electricity."
John Orchard, of Abingdon, is footpath secretary of the local
Ramblers Association.
He said: "They're doing a very good PR exercise, but my
contention is that they will wipe out some six footpaths which lie across the
reservoir side, and I need to know what recourse they will bring in to rectify
this, as well as the course of the old Wilts and Berks Canal which goes across
the middle of the site."
Mr Orchard added: "I'm sorry for the people in the villages, who
will just see this huge structure, and for the effect this will have on traffic
on the A34, which is already horrendous."
9:00am Thursday 21st September 2006
Thames Water press release
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