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Plans for a new reservoir in Oxfordshire have been dealt a fresh blow after a local district council lodged its firm opposition to the proposal.
In its official consultation response, Vale of White Horse District Council calls for the £1.2 billion reservoir proposal to be scrapped on environmental grounds.
The South East Strategic Reservoir Option (SESRO) is being promoted by the Water Resources in the South East (WRSE) group to jointly supply water to Affinity Water, Southern Water and Thames Water.
In its response to WRSE’s consultation on its draft regional plan, the district council claims that construction of the 7km2 reservoir is at odds to the region’s carbon reduction targets.
“We are facing a climate emergency. […] The solutions proposed by the water companies to tackle the climate emergency should not include solutions that have a large carbon footprint like SESRO and would severely impact the local environment in which it would be located,” Vale of White Horse District Council’s consultation response says.
“The construction of a reservoir in our district will increase our district’s carbon emissions and adversely impact on the district’s ability to become carbon neutral by 2045.”
The council adds that “it is not clear why this scheme that will result in major carbon emissions is being prioritised over smaller, less environmentally destructive projects.”
In particular the district council calls for alternative solutions to be prioritised including the Severn to Thames Transfer scheme which involves the construction of an interconnector to enable the transfer of raw water from the River Severn to the River Thames.
The council also calls for a greater focus on upgrading existing infrastructure and says “water companies should also be challenged to do more to fix leaks”.
Oxfordshire County Council has also lodged an objection to the plans. Last month, the county council’s official consultation response labelled the project as “a destructive scheme, both environmentally and in its impacts on local people”.
Plans for the reservoir have been in the works for almost 20 years, after Thames first tabled the idea in 2006. At the time the Environment Agency knocked them back on the grounds that the need for the reservoir was unproven.
The plans have garnered more support in recent years, with National Infrastructure Commission chair Sir John Armitt advocating for the new reservoir last year. Armitt said that everyone in the area would benefit from the scheme and the reservoir should be built to tackle the threat of more frequent and prolonged droughts.
In response to environmental concerns, a Thames Water spokesperson said that it would produce an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) if the scheme is taken forward.
The spokesperson added: “Reducing leakage is a priority for us and is one of the foundations of the plan. Even with an ambitious target of reducing leaks by 50%, we still need more storage in the future to account for growing population demand and climate change.”
WRSE has now concluded its consultation with a view to draw up a final plan by the end of this year.
The draft regional plan considered more than 1,000 options to address the 2.8 billion litre shortfall in water supplies that is projected by 2075, if no action is taken. This included a range of new water sources including 16 desalination plants, 28 water recycling schemes, 12 new reservoirs and 16 transfers of water from other regions, as well as extensive leakage and consumption reduction activity.
A WRSE spokesperson added: “In assessing these schemes, WRSE has considered a range of factors including construction time, short and long-term environmental impact, wider societal benefits, carbon emissions and the resilience of the source during droughts.”
WRSE received more than 900 responses to its draft regional plan.
The reservoir proposal has already been deemed a nationally significant infrastructure project and therefore would need to go through the planning inspectorate process for approval.
Portsmouth Water’s Havant Thicket reservoir will be the first built in 30 years in England. Planning permission was approved in 2021 and early works started this year with clay being dug out and an embankment beginning to take shape. The project is anticipated to be completed in 2029 to come online by the end of the decade.
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