One of the owners of Thames Water (the teacher's pension fund in Canada, I think) has already written off its investment in Thames Water. I assume it has taken out so much in dividends, writing off the origninal investment in the company is neither here nor there.
Thames Water currently has plans to flood most of our parish under a huge reservoir bigger than Kielder Water. It is on flat ground and will have 85 foot high banks, and its purpose is not to provide water to meet new housing demand. but to store water in the winter, to release into the Thames in Summer when levels are lower to make it easier to take water from the river there.
Apart from anything else, with the promise of future summers being wetter (like this year), I wonder whether it is needed. The reservoir will also occupy most of the flood plain of our village, which has flooded twice this year and will raise the water table by over a metre, which will put all the part of the village not now at risk from flooding in the flood danger zone.
There has already been one major Public Enquiry thaat rejected the plan, our big worry is that with control of the company in government hands they will over ride them and ;et it go ahead.
We are not being nimbys. There are better and cheaper ways of providing the water needed and the Public Enquiry validated these, but, from Thames Water's point of view, a big new reservoir, despite the borrowing needed to build it, added more value to the company than the simpler cheaper alternative. Once again a classic case of them riding over customers and the environement for the gain of the companies foreign owners.
