Thames Tideway tunnel meeting

Notes of the meeting on 22 July 2008

Present:

Hammersmith and Fulham Council
Councillor Stephen Greenhalgh - The Leader of the Council
Councillor Nicholas Botterill - The Deputy Leader of the Council
Councillor Paul Bristow - Cabinet Member Resident’s Services
Simon Jones - Communications Manager
Nigel Pallace - Director of Environment
Graeme Swinburne - Assistant Director Highways and Engineering 
Gordon Prangnell - Head of Highways and Construction 

Thames Water
Steve Walker - Major Projects Director
Liz Sale - Community Liaison Executive
Sian Thomas – Project Manager

Scheme Outline
The Thames Tideway Tunnel concept is to capture all the combined sewer overflows (CSO’s) between Chiswick in the west and Beckton in the east to avoid discharging sewage directly into the Thames.

Heavy fines under the European Waste Water Treatment Directive have persuaded government to develop this concept.

The Lee Valley tunnel from Abbey Mills Pumping Station to Beckon has been designed and planned permission submitted in May 08 and tenders will be issued shortly for the work. This tunnel would resolve around 50% of the current sewer discharges.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel is at a much earlier stage and TW have resources to enter into consultation with potentially affected authorities to enable the development of their designs.

At this stage there are six known sites to be capture within Hammersmith and Fulham and precise details of these sites will be provided to the Council.
Action: Thames

Current Proposals
The current proposals are for all the spoil to be removed via the river.

In addition to capturing the existing CSO’s there has to be a number of significant sized shafts for construction purposes to enable the tunnel boring machine to be setup and ultimately removed (although leaving the machine in the ground might be an option) and for the 5m tonnes of spoil to be removed.

There could be more than one boring machine and the tunnelling direction had not been determined.

Whilst the primary purpose of the tunnel was to capture the CSO, Thames did not preclude making direct foul connections into the system.  

The Council explained that once the letter was received it became a public document and there was a duty on members to place it in the public domain, particularly as it did not reflect Thames’s current literature which indicated the tunnel access shaft would be in Chiswick.

Thames gave the assurance that, because the scheme was at concept stage it was important that the process for determining the access sites was done in a transparent way and based on clear and unbiased reasoning.

Thames stated that the construction shaft or shafts needed to be located on the riverside with good highway access.  One was likely to need to be somewhere in the vicinity of the H&F / Hounslow boundary.   No reason was forthcoming when asked whether a location on the north side of the river was preferred to a location on the south side.

The council were concerned that the wording in their letter 26 June undermined this concept and gave the inference that the choice of the tunnel starting point had been pre-determined and led to the very point Thames were suggesting should be avoided, particularly as all their literature suggested that the starting point would be in Chiswick and all the letters to the London borough Chief Executives in the area said that the stating point would be in Hammersmith.

Thames apologised for the discrepancy between the wording in their letter 26 June and their earlier publicity. They undertook to revisit this and to write giving clarification.
Action: Thames

Council Response
The Leader said that the borough was being asked to receive all the dis-benefits of construction disruption without any relief from incidences of flooding which would benefit local residents. This was compounded by the apparent change in mind on Thames’s part to indicate that the likely starting point for the tunnel would be in Hammersmith rather than in Chiswick as originally proposed.

The Leader also pressed Thames to explain why Hammersmith had been selected as the likely starting point for the tunnel when there were three boroughs, Richmond and Hounslow, in addition to H&F, in the immediate vicinity. He suggested that Thames had already decided on their intended construction sites and on this basis there seemed little point in trying to enter into any meaningful negotiations or consultations.

A preliminary meeting with officers had been fixed for the 12 August to start the consultation process. The Leader was not prepared to permit this meeting to take place until Thames had reviewed their position.