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17th March 2023 in Environment

Thames Water Resources Management Plan 2024

Update: 17th March 2023

The Kew Society does have concerns over the Thames Water plan to abstract water from the Thames at Teddington and replace it with treated sewage. See below an easily understood summary of the Thames Water Plan including links to the full draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 and the Kew Society’s response.

The closing date for the consultation is the 21st March and you can read more on the Thames Water Website and complete the Thames Water Questionnaire on page 29 or click here to access the public consultation. 

The background:

Kew residents are customers of Thames Water, a handful of the 10 million customers they supply with 2.6 billion litres of water every day over an area extending from Gloucestershire to Essex, and Banbury to Guildford. Equally important, they deal with our wastewater from bathrooms, washing machines, toilets, etc. It’s a massive, complex operation, with plenty of possibilities for things to go wrong – which sometimes they do!  Recognising that the population is continuing to grow and predictions from the Meteorological Office of future UK climate changes and an increasing risk of drought, Thames Water has recently published a Draft Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP24) of changes it must make to conserve and provide adequate water supplies for their communities in the years ahead, see https://thames-wrmp.co.uk/assets/images/documents/non-technical-summary.pdf.

The options:

They are considering a range of options for guaranteeing the water supply.  The one which has attracted most attention of people in our area is the “Teddington Direct River Abstraction (DRA) scheme”. 75million litres of water/day (or possibly 100Ml/day!) would be taken (abstracted) from the Thames for drinking water just upstream of Teddington Weir and transferred to the Lee Valley reservoirs north of London via a tunnel. It would be replaced with an equivalent volume of cleaned-up sewage water from Mogden Sewage Works, Isleworth, then transported in a tunnel to the River Thames 150 m downstream of the abstraction site. Other schemes proposed in the management plan include reducing leaks, building a new reservoir in Oxfordshire, transferring water from the River Severn to the River Thames and developing new ground water sources at a number of locations in the TW area. Thames Water has announced a public consultation on the draft Management Plan which you can read on the Thames Water website here. On Page 29 you will find details of how to answer the questionnaire.

The Kew Society response:

The Kew Society has responded, focusing on the following areas:-

(i) Reducing leaks – we have urged a much more active programme than that proposed.

(ii) The Teddington DRA scheme.  We have asked TW to explain why cleaned-up sewage water from Mogden cannot be transferred directly via a tunnel to the Lee Valley reservoirs, as is proposed for transfer from the TW sewage works at Beckton. That would avoid potential environmental problems of adding 75-100Ml/day of cleaned-up sewage water from Mogden, with its higher temperature, different composition and pH, etc., to the Thames at Teddington. We have expressed concern about these problems, including possibly stimulating proliferation of non-native invasive species already present in the river. These may then dominate the river ecology at the expense of native species.

(iii) Environment and discharge of raw sewage into the river – we have highlighted that the frequent discharge of raw sewage into the River Thames from the Mogden Sewage works after heavy rain is completely contrary to TW’s Strategy Statement on the Environment in  WRMP24, i.e., “Doing the right thing for society and the environment is the responsibility of everyone at Thames Water….”.  We have said that such discharges are unacceptable in 2023 and must be prevented, irrespective of cost.  

Roger Mason

The Kew Society has responded to the plans by Thames Water to abstract water from the Thames at Teddington and replace it with treated sewage. You can see a copy of our response to Thames Water’ consultation on their draft Water Resources Management Plan 2024 here.

You can respond to a Thames Water questionnaire before the closing date on 21st March click here to access the Thames Water Public Consultation.

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