Agenda item

An opportunity for public and Member questions. Please send questions, in advance of the meeting, to Liz Hornby at democracy@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

The Chairman reported that two questions had been received from the Marlow Canoe Club which had been answered, prior to the meeting, by Thames Water and were attached to the agenda.

The Chairman asked, on behalf of members of the public whether an alert system could be set up rather than having to look at the TW Electronic Discharge Map (EDM) to check.

Jake Morley, TW, responded and stated that having checked with the relevant team, he was informed that the EDM had replaced specific alert system via texts and appreciated that there was an extra step to look at the website to determine whether discharge was taking place. He agreed that he would feed back comments from the Canoe Club but a unified approach was the aim to let the public know so they could make their own decisions before using the waterways. It was believed that the EDM was the most appropriate approach.

A question could be fed back to the Canoe Club to ask how long they would want a text alert system to be place. Perhaps periodic updates, say every hour? If that were the case, then it was suggested that checking the website would be more efficient.

It was noted that the EDM was the first of its kind in the UK and it was the intention to make it more comprehensive to pick up issues such as water quality data although the timeline for this was known at this time.

Sam Kershaw commented that he had raised the question of whether recordings from the EA could be correlated with data from TW and whether any other authority was doing so particularly in terms of determining the impact of incidents on the quality of water for the wildlife and other water users. Andrew Scott, TW, responded that this question should really be directed to the EA. It was noted that water companies upstream and downstream do carry out monitoring on certain serious works.

Nick Rowcliffe asked whether consideration had been given to programming in an alert system from the EDM so that people could sign up for particular outfalls/alerts?

Jake Morley responded that TW was reviewing and understanding what could be done to increase date output. There was shortly to be an addition to the EDM, although that was, for the moment, confidential but that it would be publicised when they could.

In response to the statement about dogs becoming ill having been in the river, a request to co-ordinate an email chain with people who wanted to report these incidents to TW. Jake commented that TW and the EA would like to see these to record the incidents.

Philip Emmet asked what was the current capacity of the sewage works and what would the capacity be once the new housing came online within the next 18 months?

Andrew Scott responded that he did not have the complete answer. The population equivalent to the site was approximately 200,000 and there was no plan, as far as he was aware, for a growth scheme within 2025 to 2030. However, it was considered that the capacity was sufficient until at least 2030. Population equivalent was how TW determined the load and the flow into the sewage treatment works although there was a more complicated model that looked at industry in the catchment and the various types of housing within that. Infiltration was looked at a number reached from there. Once the figures had been reached and looked at decisions were then taken whether to expand or not. It was considered that the Little Marlow site was not on the list of sites due for significant growth upgrade. However, resilience work would, in the meantime, be carried out.

Concern was raised that, having been informed at a previous meeting, there was no capacity to switch one unit out to have maintenance carried out while the plant was running, therefore leading to concerns about the running of an efficient plant.

Andrew Scott stated that there would be no more capacity due to growth and that a resilience project was being put in place which meant that assets could be taken out which would be termed as not increasing capacity.