Roadworks (or not)!

Mon 19 May 2008, 15:36

The old water boards used to be responsible for ALL water resources in their areas of operation - that included management of ground water and springs etc. I don't know what happened in the privatisation rip-off of the taxpayer back in the Tory Govt days (at the peak of their corruption with corporations, well not quite, that was the railways) but the Environment Agency also has responsibility for the oversight of water resources, and it may be that the folks down in Wallingford should be the point of contact. Clearly water run off "uncontrolled" along roadways, running into sewers and surface drainage systems, could potentially impact natural water systems like the Evenlode with run-off pollution and degrade its ecological condition (which is pretty good for England) and also effect sewage water cleansing for similar reasons.

I can see a potential for the spring falling between two stools here and, given that torrential outburts like last year are more likely to happen in the future given global warming, and a series of springs broke out along the length of Wigwell from water flowing under the town on the clay beds, there could be major cause for concern - alternating fine clay beds and thin fractured almost shalelike limestone layers with water flowing between them has considerable landslip potential! As a boy and adolescent I lived near the edge of the Niagara escarpment which is not dissimilar in that area to the formations here, and landslips during torrential summer rain (common in Ontario but we're not used to the frequency we are going to have here of such storms) were not infrequent as the scarp slowly subsided into a gentler angles slope into Lake Ontario...

So I would suggest a two pronged approach to the problem and AFAIK there is shared responsibility for water resources between Thames Water for drainage and the EA for water resources and quality over all, and they need their heads banging together to work together. TW is putting shareholders interest above public interest in a blatant manner and needs to be pressured to stop - a good reason why "natural monopolies" like water should be in some sort of public service administration!