October 11, 2024
By Harry Mottram: It was a paradise for wetland birds, swan, ducks, coots and waders such as herons, dunlins and egrets but for many humans Cheddar Reservoir looked (and smelled) rather weird. Huge areas of the floor to the reservoir were exposed as water levels dropped to near drought levels with the yacht club unable to use the jetty as islands appeared and the vast clay floor partly exposed.
Depsite the heavy rain in the summer with a particularly soggy June and September according to the Met Office it wasn’t as wet as 2012 – the wettest summer since 1891. It was cooler this summer than normal while Somerset saw above average rainfall in September when usually the levels rise quickly – but that didn’t happen until the start of October when water was being pumped into the Reservoir at a much higher rate.
The reason given by Bristol Water is perhaps not the one I for one had expected. I had summised it was Barrow Tanks where the water was going in the Southern Resilience pipline constructed in 2018. In fact it was a problem in Chew Valley Lake that had to be fixed with water pumped from Cheddar Reservoir meaning the levels dropped while water was pumped to the other side of the Mendips.
This is a statement from Bristol Water to my inquiry: “We have had good flows into Cheddar Reservoir this year, we have also pumped out a large volume too. This year we had an extended blue-green algae outbreak on Chew Valley Lake so we reduced our abstraction during these periods, whereas Cheddar was not affected and provided support. Additionally, when the inflows are good and the environment is wetter a good autumn/winter refill is the most likely scenario and we can drop the level lower.”
Chew Valley Lake is a flooded valley with the work to create a dam, remove thousands of tons of soil, rocks, trees, hedgerows and the village of Moreton begun in 1951 and completed in 1956. It is the fifth largest man made lake in the UK running to around an area of around 1,200 acres is size when full. Like Cheddar Reservoir Chew Valley Lake allows sailing and fishing and other water based activities but these were suspended due to high levels of blue-green algae in June as the algae can be harmful to people and animals causing vomiting and diarrhea.
Bristol Water added: “We operate our reservoirs and wider network as one conjunctive system due to the high level of interconnectivity we have, this means that we can vary our supply strategy for a given scenario. Cheddar reservoir level can vary quite significantly throughout the year, the summer of 2023 was particularly wet and levels remained unusually high, whereas 2024 started wet, but this summer was less wet than 2023.”
Axbridge News is edited by Harry Mottram and is published for the interest of himself and fellow residents.
Harry is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc
Email:harryfmottram@gmail.com
Website:www.harrymottram.co.uk
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