31-07-2025

Noah never had this problem

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At our July Catisfield social morning young lady called Amy Rushton from Portsmouth Water gave us an extremely informative presentation about that big hole appearing in the countryside 'twixt Staunton Country Park and Rowlands Castle now known as The Havant Thicket Reservoir.

With two large display boards, laptop computer, leaflets and all of the other paraphanalia in a folding baby cart she set up her stall, slight panic because we couldn't seem to get the sound working for her slide show but, so what, she started her talk and much to her and our amazement the audio cut in at exactly the right moment.

Much information was imparted and it seemed so nice to have a speaker on such a politically loaded subject that quite happily answered some questions with an "I don't know" response, although if we cared to write the question down she would look into it and furnish the author with a reply.

From what I could make out Portsmouth Water will own the reservoir but it will be paid for by Southern Water. It makes one wonder if it is all done just to confuse the public. However I don't think many of us realised quite how important this development is going to be for the future of South Hampshire as, if housing requirements and population increase continues in this area, then it is estimated that Portsmouth Water's customers (not including any Southern Water needs) will be using an additional 165,300,000 litres (36,360,917 gallons) by 2050 and without this additional resource and the extremely clever clever plans afoot for water recycling that will go with it, either abstraction rates would have to increase thereby killing all wildlife in the vitally important chalk streams in the area or residents going thirsty.

I found the plans for protecting the ecology taken were were really important although thankfully, they haven't needed to put a bat tunnel in place so that saved £100,000,000.

Life really is getting scary at the moment. There is a short video on the project at https://www.portsmouthwater.co.uk/new-reservoir/ and for more details have a look at this website where you can also register to make comments.

Author: Chris Nixon