Water Quality
UK Advances Controversial Plan for $440M Water Infrastructure Project
Thames Water has proposed the plan in order to be better prepared for drought.
Map courtesy of Thames Water Utilities
The U.K. government will fast-track the regulatory process behind a controversial plan to extract drinking water from the River Thames in an affluent area of west London and replace it with treated sewage. Through the estimated $440-million Teddington Direct River Abstraction project, Thames Water Utilities Ltd. plans to secure up to nearly 20-million gallons a day of drinking water by the early 2030s, during droughts.
While Thames Water develops its abstraction vision, opposition is growing. A key opponent, the Save Our Lands & River campaign, objects to the physical disruption of planned work, as well as impacts on river water quality downstream of the weir.
The group cites increased water temperature and salinity as well additional pollution from microplastics, "forever chemicals” and bacteria among potential impacts. Around 30,000 people have already signed a petition against the plan.
Political leaders at the local planning authority, Richmond Borough Council, also are hostile to the proposal. The authority "will robustly resist any plans which we consider damaging to the river and to our own land, where better solutions are viable," said Gareth Roberts, the council's leader.
The utility now supplies 686.8-million gallons of water daily and admits leaking about a quarter of it into the ground.
Last month, the environment secretary, Steve Barclay, granted Thames Water's request for permitting of its proposal to be handled through the national Development Consent Order process rather than the potentially slower local planning approval route.
Since the 1950s, the utility has abstracted water at Hampton, about 12.5 miles southwest of London. Once treated at a local plant, water has been conveyed along a 19-mile tunnel, with a 145-million gallons a day design capacity, to reservoirs in east London.
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Now the utility wants to take more water, this time from farther downstream. The fresh water abstraction site would be upstream of a large weir at Teddington. It would involve a new pipeline feeding into the existing supply tunnel to east London, to augment resources there.
To maintain flows in the tidal stretch downstream of the weir, the utility would pipe tertiary treated wastewater from the existing Mogden plant, around four miles away.
Still in its early planning days, the abstraction scheme is being overseen by an alliance of the Water Services Regulation Authority, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Environment Agency as part of a national review of strategic water supply options proposed by utilities.
New supplies for more than nine million people in England alone will be needed by the mid 2030s, according to National Infrastructure Commission.
