River Crane: Polluted by Thames Water, October 2011

To read about the pollution of the River Crane by Thames Water in October 2011, please visit our Facebook page:

Crisis at the River Crane

facebook.com/RiverCraneRestoration

Here is the text of a Letter to the Editor that appeared in The Richmond and Twickenham Times written by Dr Gary Backler, a Trustee of the Friends of the River Crane Environment (FORCE), the volunteer group that has carried out improvements to the river and river bank life killed by the pollution caused by Thames Water.

"...I am disappointed with the media's sparse coverage of the major pollution incident on the River Crane over the weekend of October 29.

"The world's foremost international airport came within hours of being awash with raw sewage.

"More than 10,000 fish, including mature specimins up to 15 years old, as well as all the invertebrate life on which the fish, birds and river animals depend, were wiped out within the space of less than 24 hours.

"And once again, courtesy of Thames Water, users of the Crane and the Thames were exposed to raw sewage on a medieval scale. This is a story that needs to be told.

"Several things seem clear. Thames Water has clearly failed in one of its core activities - the safe management of sewage. Thames Water's knowledge of is key assests seems uncertain - otherwise it would have known that a key valve was about to stick.

"Thames Water's maintenance practices may also be deficient - otherwise the valve would have not have stuck in the first place.

"Certainly its risk management and contingency planning processes failed.

"Faced with these failures on the night, did Thames Water make a commercial but cynical decision?

"To avoid international profile and damages that a major pollution incident at Heathrow would have caused, did it decide to spread (literally) the damage over a much larger, more diffuse and disenfranchised population downstream of the Crane, none of whom enjoys the protection and redress of a contract?

"The commercial consequences and the media response would both have been very different had it opted to confine the problem to Heathrow instead.

"The incident raises some serious questions to which all Londoners deserve a response.

"1. Why has Heathrow been allowed to expand so much, without any upgrade to its sewage bypass and failsafe mechanisms beyond asingle valve apparently installed in the 1930s?

"2. How many other key clients and sites are dependent, like Heathrow, on a single, ancient valve?

"3. What isthe condition of those valves, and does Thames Water know their condition? Is this just an accident waiting to happen again at some other point along the Thames Valley any time soon? What if more than one valve fails at once next time?

"4. What contingency plans, if any, have Thames Water prepared for these various key clients and sites, in response to the specific potential risk of valve failure and sewage ingress?

Londoners have to hope the Environment Agency, as the regulator of Thames Water, gets satisfactory responses to these questions dring the years that it takes the Crane to recover."

Thames Water has promised to restore the River Crane environment...the restoration will be documented at facebook.com/RiverCraneRestoration

Thank you for your interest and support!