Last year many of you might have received a flyer from Thames Water regarding the work carried out up Berry Hill and environs. I can discover few people south of the A4 who were formally told and they were left to work it all out from the posters up and down the A4.
To summarise what had been going on:
- Its all part of a £30m project to ‘protect the environment and ensure water supply to the region’. (Do they really mean ‘South-East Region’? Are we being further Regionalised by stealth?)
- The Cliveden Road work has now been completed , except for the removal of the pile of piping opposite the Cliveden woodland car park entrance.
- They are then laying pipes from Buffins Estate to Burnham Water Treatment plant which meant some road closures along Hill farm Road, Hitcham lane, Boundary Road and Marsh Lane.
- They have tunneled under the A4. At one time they were considering closing down the A4 for a while but common sense eventually prevailed (presume this to mean they were told ‘Don’t be daft’ by the County Council)
- All the piping is supposed to be completed by Spring this year.
- Bore holes were dug by the A4 (the Boot-sale field) which will supply the Dorney water treatment plant. The treated water will supply homes and businesses in Slough, Wycombe and Aylesbury.
I spoke to the Water Board about the quite significant drop in water pressure many people are experiencing in Ellington Road last year(and, I assume, elsewhere). I was assured that this had nothing to do with the work being carried out above. (Just a coincidence?) The reason for the drop in pressure is that they have installed a new new pressure reducing valve for the area to try to even out the wide variations in pressure due to changing demands during the day and night time. This, they assure me, will help reduce the number of bursts and leaks that occur because of these wide variations.
Interestingly, the diggers uncovered a late Bronze Age / early Iron Age settlement in a ‘hilltop paddock’ in Taplow, dating from about 850 BC. Thames Water are keeping the location secret to avoid villains like us from pillaging the site. It seems the site was in use up to medieval times and though fortified it was probably not a fort. It was normal for those far off days to either fortify the farm against bandits or just to create a raised area defining their boundary. From the photograph on the website its not hard for locals to work out where the site is.
So we have various pieces to a puzzle; new piping, new water treatment plants, bore holes and a drop in water pressure. To these we can add the Jubilee River and what appears to be a serious drop in the local water table. Is there really a connection? Our water, we are told comes from ‘resources’ in Datchet and Dorney Reach. I take that to mean that it comes from there after being treated. This statement made me a little curious about why the bore holes off the Bath Road. The water engineers are installing a membrane filtration plant so that more water can be drawn from boreholes in nearby Taplow. The water comes from Taplow to Dorney and from there the water will be distributes via the new pipelines to Slough, Wycombe and Aylesbury.
We are told that the
company can cease pumping water from boreholes in Mill End, near High Wycombe which will increase the volume of water that flows into the River Wye and benefit the environment as well . So there we have it, the environment being protected is the
Wye Valley, not Taplow. And where’s the water coming from? Why Taplow of course. The Jubilee River is completed which, as some pundits have it, has dropped the water table and seriously affected the Maidenhead ditch. So at a time when apparently the Jubilee River has made a dent in our ground water by exporting it downstream, Thames Water decide to dig bore holes to take even more water from the area. and distribute it to all points north.
And there’s no connection with our drop in water pressure? Well, I suppose there
could be fairies at the bottom of my garden too....
PS: It's official - The South East of England has less water per head than Sudan! There are 58,000 gallons of water for every person in the South East Region while in Syria the figure is 95,000 and in Sudan 269,000. So where does the water come from for another 750,000 houses I wonder?
