The Avalon Lakes: An Environmental Opportunity

Abstract

The Avalon Lakes project was a concept to utilize, as water storage reservoirs, shallow basins left by commercial peat exploitation. There are, however, important nature-conservation interests in the project area. The proposed scheme ultimately incorporated measures to enhance these and, perhaps unusually for a source development, was broadly supported by conservation groups. The related cost was estimated at £4.2M, or 17% of the overall source works’price. Plans and scientific investigations of the scheme occupied a span of 21 years to 1988. It was eventually abandoned as an option for future water supplies following the restructuring of Wessex Water Authority in preparation for privatization of the water industry. The grounds for terminating the project were substantially concerned with costs, though coloured by lingering apprehension about the consistency of water quality. There is now a greater public awareness of the adverse environmental effects of water resource developments. It is suggested that this will lead to future schemes, less obviously suited to their surroundings than Avalon, incurring a higher conservation-related cost in order to gain acceptance.