Lake or mistake? The row over water firms, drought and Abingdon’s new super-reservoir
I t will be like a giant flan case full of water dumped on a marsh, says Julie Mabberley. She is discussing the plan to put a 150bn-litre reservoir, spanning almost two miles across, at the foot of Twyford Down near Abingdon in Oxfordshire.
Mabberley, a management consultant and local campaigner with 1,000 people on her list of anti-reservoir sympathisers, believes the 25-metre-high walls needed to keep in the huge volume of water would be too close to hundreds of homes built near the site to be safe.
Her doubts, and those of other campaigners, about the feasibility and safety of the £1.4bn reservoir feed into an unresolved debate over the need for extra water storage in the south and east of England.
Britain’s water companies are grabbing the headlines after spilling vast amounts of raw sewage near beaches and into rivers. But the other problem bubbling away is the need for them to provide more water, especially in the east and south-east, where natural stores in underground aquifers are being sucked dry. After more than three decades of privatisation, debate is raging about the ownership of water companies, the extraction of huge sums in dividends, and how vast and vital upgrades to infrastructure are funded as the climate changes.
Emergencies and extremes are expected to become more frequent now that the country is increasingly becoming used to flash floods and droughts, where once showers, drizzle and the occasional burst of sun were more common.
The Abingdon reservoir is the cornerstone of plans to build a resilient network of water sources – ones that can be easily deployed when shortages hit. Yet local residents and politicians say they remain confused by it. What was going to provide Oxfordshire with a degree of
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