Reading Evening Post – Thursday 21 March 1991
Thames Water experts expect water consumption to rocket in the next three decades and are pressing ahead with proposals for a new reservoir near Abingdon to meet demand.
The Haverhill Echo – Thursday 13 January 1994
Thames water deferred their plans to build a reservoir near Abingdon because their priority programme to identify leaks and repair them has proved successful. (Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive)
Today in Trinity Church Abingdon, there was an exhibition by Thames Water on their draft Water Resources Plan 2024 entitled ‘Keeping water flowing for the future’. During the lifetime of this blog, since 2006, this is the third time a reservoir near Abingdon has been proposed as a solution to meeting water demand.
The displays around the exhibition showed the challenges of keeping water flowing for the future and some of the solutions. Thames Water plans to reduce leaks by 16% by 2030 and halve leaks by 2050. There is a plan for a new river abstraction at Teddington that could be built by 2030. The largest display was given to a new reservoir near Abingdon in Oxfordshire that could be available by 2040. Another option is a Severn to Thames Transfer. The consultation recommends going ahead with the Teddington scheme, followed by the reservoir near Abingdon while continuing to fix leaks.
GARD (Group against Reservoir Development) banners can be seen around the villages of Drayton and Steventon, immediately neighbouring the proposed reservoir. GARD’s message to Thames Water is: Stop the Reservoir, fix the leaks, transfer new water from the Severn. There are more details at the Gard website.
The Thames Water presentations, and consultation, can be seen at thames-wrmp.co.uk. This includes Thames Water’s reasons for choosing a new reservoir over the Severn transfer. The consultation began in November 2022 and ends Tuesday, 21st March 2023.
It’s nice to know that by 2077 Thames Water will have fixed all their leaks.
Would be curious to know how much clean water is lost every day by an ageing infrastructure. Actually I probably don’t want to know as it would make me so sad.
Hmmm …. if it came to a play-off re. public poop-ularity between the Current Government and Thames Water I think the former might just pull-off it’s first PR result in years.
The proposed reservoir is not to supply water for this area it is to supply London and the South East. There are many suitable sites near London why are they not being condsidered? It would be less enironmentally disruptive to build nearer London rather than having to pipe the water that far.
Would they need to pipe it, could it not just flow down The Thames?
Or they could flood Heathrow … That would be quite green – or have I got the wrong end of the stick again?
Some water from leaks will find its way back into the groundwater so not all is lost.