Severn Trent Water has dropped plans to pipe treated sewage from Bishop's Castle to the River Onny.
The BBC News Shropshire pages report:
Severn Trent Water had proposed building a four-mile pipe to take treated sewage from its plant in Bishop's Castle and discharge it into the River Onny, which sparked a local campaign against the move.
The water company said on Friday that the plan would not proceed, as early modelling had shown it was not possible to guarantee that there would be no impact on the Onny.
This scheme was drawn up because this sewage is currently discharged in a way that eventually takes it to the River Clun, is protected by law as it is a conservation area.
The Onny does not have the same status, yet it is home to otters, kingfishers and dippers. It also contains a strong population of brown trout and grayling, and is an important site for Atlantic salmon.
Geoff Hardy from Fish Legal said when the pipeline was proposed:
"Rerouting sewage releases from one river to another that is miles away but has less legal protections cannot be the way to solve pollution and planning problems in this country. This is illustrative of the whole mess surrounding water industry activity and regulation to protect our rivers.
'"On the face of it, this is a cynical 'gaming’ exercise by a shadowy cabal of regulators and the local council to get around current restrictions on adding more pollution to the River Clun. We want to know why other options were not prioritised and why the Environment Agency appear to have agreed to this given that their own latest fishery report recommended using the Onny as an Index river - a critical means by which fish populations are monitored."
The pipeline certainly sounded like an expensive way of getting round the letter of the law while evading its spirit.
The photo above shows the River Onny at Craven Arms. The only thing I will add is that when my mother died Severn Trent was the easiest and kindest utility to deal with.
No comments:
Post a Comment