Legal Challenge Threat to London's Sewer

Plans for a Controversial £4.2bn Thames Water's "Super Sewer" Beneath London Have Been Threatened with Legal Challenge by a Local Council

A planning decision is due by Friday on the 15-mile Thames Tideway Tunnel, which will add a permanent levy of up to £80 to Thames Water customers' bills by the early 2020s.

Ministers say the supersewer is the only viable solution to tackling the problem of millions of tonnes of raw sewage spilling into the Thames each year from the capital's overflowing Victorian sewer system.

Failure to tackle the problem will leave the UK subject to EU fines of up to £100m a year.

But Hammersmith and Fulham Council claims there was inadequate consultation over plans for a massive excavation site on the riverbank in Fulham, where residents would face the "avoidable misery" of "24/7 noise, dust and air pollution for around 8 years".

It has now warned it may "decide to challenge the validity" of any decision to approve the project and has written to environment secretary Liz Truss - who will take the decision jointly alongside communities secretary Eric Pickles - urging her to reject the planning application.

The tunneling work should instead take place at "a much more appropriate site just across the river" in Richmond, it argues.

Thames Water's original plans proposed using the Richmond site, on open fields at Barn Elms, near the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust nature reserve at Barnes. However, after initial consultation Thames revised its plans and decided to use brownfield land by Carnwath Road in Fulham instead.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council says this decision puts "playing fields in Barn Elms before humans in Fulham". It says the "huge construction zone should be moved away from people's homes and local schools" and warns the health of residents near the drilling site could be at risk.

In his letter to Ms Truss, Cllr Wesley Harcourt, the council's cabinet member for the environment, says: "The human cost of Thames Water's super sewer plans for south Fulham will be so much greater than they would be at Barn Elms. The devastating sewer proposals would see south Fulham homes blighted, roads congested and school children and vulnerable residents all at risk from noxious fumes."

Thames said it had switched to the Fulham site because initial consultation responses urged it to "avoid greenfield sites, where possible, and use the river more for transporting materials".

"The Carnwath Road site is brownfield land and affords better, safer access to the river for loading barges," a spokesman said.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has also previously questioned whether the project should proceed at all, suggesting there could be cheaper ways of tackling the sewage problem, which results from rainwater draining into the sewers. The sewer system is close to full capacity and as little as 2mm of rainfall can trigger sewage discharges into the Thames.

But Lord de Mauley, the environment minister, has insisted London "cannot manage without the tunnel".

"The tunnel is the right solution for London, and the only solution compliant with the urban wastewater treatment directive," he said earlier this year.

Jacob Tompkins, managing director of water efficiency organisation Waterwise, said: "We don't have any alternative but to accept the tunnel at the moment because of the timescale, the financial mechanisms and the fact this needs sorting out."

But he said plans must also be in place to look for more sustainable ways of dealing with rainwater in future, such as rainwater harvesting in commercial buildings, water butts in homes, and better urban design.

Source: Telegraph

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