Cllr Ali de Lisle, from Sands End Ward, gave the following speech at last night's Council meeting
Thank you Madam Mayor.
My fellow Cllr has just spoken on the merits of building a Super Sewer but I want to focus on a small area in the far south of this borough that has been named as a potential site for this project. Carnwath Road.
It wasn’t Thames Water’s first choice, in fact in December last year a report was published by Thames Water in titled “Barn Elms Sports Ground – How We Chose the Preferred Site”. The report clearly states on page 3 that “the sites identified at Carnwath Road even if used together, were considered to be too small to be used as a main tunnel drive site” it goes onto say on page 4 “we chose Barn Elms because there were no suitable sites in Wandsworth Bridge from which to drive the tunnel”.
In March this year Thames Water did a huge U turn. Protests at the preferred site in Barnes made Thames Water look for another solution. Carnwath Road became big enough to be considered to be the ‘main drive site’ for the Super Sewer Project.
Let’s start with Carnwath Road itself, for those of you who don’t know it well, its just off Wandsworth Bridge Road by PC World before you go over the bridge. There is a small junction into Carnwath Road that can’t cope at the best of times.
It’s a tightly packed bustling area that is home to many residents in flats and houses who overlook the wharfs, a small business park that employs 130 people, a gym, a pub and the river walk. There are two nursery schools, five primary schools and one secondary school within 500 metres and a further 15,000 residents and 2,200 businesses all within 1,500 metres of the site.
It isn’t a vast empty space it’s a community – a home to these residents, a place of education for their children, and a livelihood to 130 people who work in Carnwath Business Park who would all lose their jobs. There are also advanced plans for the area as well – its a site of major regeneration for our borough with over 400 new desperately needed new homes will be built, and jobs created boosting the local economy.
The idea of trying to squeeze a construction site the size of six football pitches with a huge crater containing a drill wider than three London buses onto these wharfs is ridiculous.
If this goes ahead, the construction site will be operational 24hrs a day. There will be no let up in the drilling, the vibrations caused will have a terrible effect on the quality of lives of residents, there are children’s bedrooms 10 ft from the site boundary – imagine how the disturbance would affect their development – the sleepless nights would cause their education to suffer.
The air quality during construction will be extremely poor and who knows what the long term health effects of this might be, the noise pollution that an active 24hr site would cause and finally the smell of raw sewage during these works.
Thames Water say the project will last 7 years from start to finish, I have my doubts, the very nature of what Thames Water are proposing to do is full of the unknown, it seems inevitable that it will suffer delays. In Chicago they have been building a similar tunnelling project for 30 years, its completion isn’t due to 2029 and its way, way over budget.
And after the project finally finishes these residents and this area of Fulham will be left with a permanent reminder of the hell they have lived through, a 15 metre high ventilation column that will discharge gases caused by raw sewage as well as a lifetime charge on their water bills. Imagine that on
the river frontage in South Fulham, imagine that in front of your home.
While Thames Water executives deliberate over whether or not to name Carnwath Road as a preferred site, local residents are suffering, they’ve had alarming letters from Thames Water asking for details of their mortgages – why would Thames need this information if not for compulsory purchase? .... and they are already reporting problems with the value of their homes and their ability to sell or let property.
There are other options to this – the best of course would be not building it at all but should it go ahead there are also other better suited sites –Barn Elms, the site that was named in December as the preferred option. Thames Water admit that there would not be the anywhere near the impact on the local area and residents at if the tunnel was built at Barn Elms. Thames Water will still need to have a construction site at Barn Elms whatever happens so lets put this into focus - there are one million square meters of open fields at Barn Elms and Thames Water would use just 2% of that. The construction site will be tucked away in a corner and a behind a screen of trees. I know what I think is better.
I want to conclude by mentioning the RATS residents group – these are the residents of South Fulham who standing up and fighting for their community. They have come together to stop big business from destroying Fulham from this totally unacceptable burden, I whole heartedly support their fantastic efforts and I would encourage all of you to sign the RATS petition and offer your support.
www.fulhamrats.org
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