Daily Mail
A Wills
Mail on Sunday 31.3.19 “HS2’s GIANT VIADUCT COULD POISON OR CUT VITAL WATER SUPPLIES”
It’s been labelled a white elephant & condemned as an environmental blight. Now there are fears HS2 could cause a drought. Campaigners accuse project managers of taking an ‘insane gamble’ by planning to build a 2-mile viaduct that risks contaminating water & cutting off supplies for 100s of 1,000s of people. The viaduct will span the Colne Valley Regional Park to the West of London & will need several 100 concrete piles to be drilled deep into chalk ground which holds huge amounts of water & supplies
over 1 billion litres each day. Affinity Water, supplying 3.5million customers across the Home Countries, draws 60% of its water from the Chiltern aquifer via boreholes. The HS2 rail line between London & Birmingham will pass close to 6 boreholes, including 3 in Colne Valley Regional Park. Affinity warned Parliament 6 years ago that HS2 construction could lead to pollution, causing the water supply to be ‘entirely jeopardised.’ The Govt has admitted that ‘fully mitigating the risk is not possible due to the unpredictable nature of impacts on the aquifer.’ The first piles are scheduled to be sunk this year & the Govt’s worst-case scenario is that 3 boreholes are destroyed, forcing affinity to build new ones & divert emergency water supplies from elsewhere in the country at a cost of £77 million. Astonishingly, ministers agreed that taxpayers will foot the bill if supplies are disrupted. MP Cheryl Gillan, through whose Buckinghamshire constituency the line will run, said “The potential contamination & interruption of our water supplies from HS2 construction cannot be underestimated.”
Mail on Sunday 31.3.19 “HS2’s GIANT VIADUCT COULD POISON OR CUT VITAL WATER SUPPLIES”
It’s been labelled a white elephant & condemned as an environmental blight. Now there are fears HS2 could cause a drought. Campaigners accuse project managers of taking an ‘insane gamble’ by planning to build a 2-mile viaduct that risks contaminating water & cutting off supplies for 100s of 1,000s of people. The viaduct will span the Colne Valley Regional Park to the West of London & will need several 100 concrete piles to be drilled deep into chalk ground which holds huge amounts of water & supplies
over 1 billion litres each day. Affinity Water, supplying 3.5million customers across the Home Countries, draws 60% of its water from the Chiltern aquifer via boreholes. The HS2 rail line between London & Birmingham will pass close to 6 boreholes, including 3 in Colne Valley Regional Park. Affinity warned Parliament 6 years ago that HS2 construction could lead to pollution, causing the water supply to be ‘entirely jeopardised.’ The Govt has admitted that ‘fully mitigating the risk is not possible due to the unpredictable nature of impacts on the aquifer.’ The first piles are scheduled to be sunk this year & the Govt’s worst-case scenario is that 3 boreholes are destroyed, forcing affinity to build new ones & divert emergency water supplies from elsewhere in the country at a cost of £77 million. Astonishingly, ministers agreed that taxpayers will foot the bill if supplies are disrupted. MP Cheryl Gillan, through whose Buckinghamshire constituency the line will run, said “The potential contamination & interruption of our water supplies from HS2 construction cannot be underestimated.”
posted by Bill at
5:16 PM
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