Councillor flushed over super-sewer

Resident services leader Paul Bristow wrote to councillors of 10 other boroughs which lie next to the river earlier this month to try to muster opposition to the Thames Water project.

He claimed it would lead to 'unacceptable disruption' to parks and open spaces along the banks during the tunnel's eight-year construction period, and would put many residents in 'water poverty' as rates go up to help pay for it.

"The social costs of the scheme will be felt most acutely at a local level and these will be severe and long lasting," said Cllr Bristow. "Those affected by the works would be locked into the nightmare of living by a major construction site for eight years. It is most unlikely that many people would be able to sell up and leave as property prices in the affected areas would undoubtedly be affected."

He added: "The energy use and the carbon emissions that will be produced over eight years in the construction of this enormous tunnel will be far more detrimental to the long term environmental well-being of the planet than the occasional overflow of raw sewage into the Thames."

Cllr Bristow is pushing instead for investment in the separation of sewage and drainage systems - although to do so across London would cost vastly more money.

Thames Water insists the tunnel is essential to prevent sewage overflow stations having to be emptied into the river whenever London experiences heavy rainfall. In November alone, some 12.7 billion litres of raw effluent mixed with rain water were poured straight in the river, including 600 million litres from overflows very close to Hammersmith Bridge.

Mike Tuffrey, leader of the Liberal Democrats' London Assembly group and environmental campaigner, said: "Support for the Tideway Tunnel is widespread across London, including the Mayor, who has set out his support for the scheme in his water strategy.

"The backers of the tunnel also include the Environment Agency, the River Thames Society and obviously the many rowers and leisure users who directly face the reality of the Thames operating like an open sewer.

"Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative councillors are flying in the face of reason in their isolated opposition to this much needed infrastructure project.

"Above all else they are simply wrong to claim that there is only occasional discharges of sewage into the Thames when in the first 11 months of this year a staggering 50 million cubic metres of untreated sewage flowed into the river. Their so called alternative proposals are neither realistic or affordable."

The Government is believed to be pushing for planning applications relating to the tunnel to be decided by the Infrastructure Planning Commission, an independent body that decides major public projects, bypassing local authorities such as Hammersmith and Fulham Council.