Super-sewer: Council seeks allies.

12.37.41am GMT Wed 13th Jan 2010

H&F Council's campaign to block Thames Water's super-sewer continues with our councillors writing to colleagues on other councils hoping to persuade them to take the same obstructive approach to the project, even though the tunnel now has the backing of (Tory) Mayor at City Hall.

The latest piece on the Council's website repeats the complaints about the cost of the Tideway Tunnel, but despite the first paragraph implying (again) that it will be paid for by Hammersmith and Fulham residents, there is a later acknowledgement that the tunnel will be paid for by all Thames Water customers.

The complaints that the project may be referred to the new Infrastructure Planning Commission, (which has been created by the Labour Government specifically to override local interests where nationally important infrastructure is being planned), would have more force if the Council had not demonstrated over the last year by its obstructive actions and scaremongering, that it could not be depended on to consider the matter in an objective and rational way in the light of information available.

Residents along the Thames WILL find their amenities restricted by the proposal to construct a major piece of infrastructure in the area, and the cost may well be seen as excessive, but the £ 2.2 billion will take our sewage system straight from the 19th century to the 21st. If the Conservative administration in Hammersmith and Fulham had the interests of residents in mind rather than their own amour-propre, they would admit that their initial opposition was ill-founded and agree to cooperate with Thames Water to mitigate the impacts of a necessary project.

H&F Liberal Democrats urge our council to abandon their opposition to a scheme that will stop toilets being emptied into the Thames every six days or so, and we are relieved to see in the H&F News article's proposal for a "shorter, smarter super-sewer" an oblique acknowledgement that something has to be done to improve our 150-year-old sewage system.