A banner displayed outside Steventon Village Hall calls for a halt to the reservoir project near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK, on Nov. 15,
Photographer: Vivian Wan/Bloomberg£2.4 Billion Reservoir Opens Up Fresh Battlefront for Thames Water
The debt-laden water company, the UK’s biggest, warns that without the reservoir London risks running dry.
Imported icebergs. Tankers filled with water from Norway. Rain cloud seeding. All were investigated as possible ways to avoid drought in London and south-east England in coming decades. All were rejected as too expensive. A tidal barrage, desalinization, and even piping supplies from the wetter west of England to customers in the south have also been considered.
Instead Thames Water Ltd., Britain’s biggest water supplier and among its most leveraged, has plumped for a £2.4 billion ($3 billion) publicly-financed project to build a seven-kilometer-square reservoir near Abingdon, in Oxfordshire. It would be so big — its capacity is set to be 150 billion liters of water — that once built, it will take two winters to fill. But the plan has triggered opposition, with one local MP calling the project, which still needs government approval, a “monstrosity”.