Radley Lakes saved

Fol­low­ing years of cam­paign­ing through legal chan­nels, and the squat­ting of a build­ing by the side of Thrupp Lake at the begin­ning of 2007, the Save Radley Lakes cam­paign is vic­to­ri­ous — hoorah! Use the search above for old sto­ries and pho­tos from the cam­paign — sto­ries about the recent vic­to­ry and future plans are below.

End of an Era

Yes­ter­day’s (17.12.08) announce­ment by RWE Npow­er brought to an end a 41 month cam­paign to save the last remain­ing Radley Lakes, Thrupp and Bull­field Lakes, from destruc­tion by being filled with waste pul­verised fuel ash (PFA) from the Did­cot A Pow­er Sta­tion.

It also brings to an end 23 years of fill­ing of old grav­el pits in Radley with pow­er sta­tion ash, which began in 1985, when the Pow­er Sta­tion was run by the nation­alised Cen­tral Elec­tric­i­ty Gen­er­at­ing Board and when the envi­ron­ment fig­ured less high­ly in pop­u­lar con­cerns. The choice back then was between land­fill with gen­er­al waste, com­mer­cial exploita­tion, or ash. Local peo­ple vot­ed for the ash, which is prob­a­bly what they would have got any­way.

The ash had been pumped into the grav­el pits as a slur­ry via an under­ground pipeline. Many grav­el pits were filled in this way over the inter­ven­ing years and peo­ple did not seem to mind, though eye­brows were being increas­ing­ly raised, and there were objec­tions to the fill­ing of Lakes H and I, which had become a spec­tac­u­lar haven for wild­fowl. In 2005, RWE npow­er sought per­mis­sion to fill the the two remain­ing grav­el pits. These were the old­est exca­va­tions, which had, over the half cen­tu­ry or so of their exis­tence, become restored into beau­ti­ful lakes and had been giv­en names by local peo­ple.

How the Lakes Were Saved (in a nut­shell)

The small­er Bull­field Lake was res­cued from this fate fol­low­ing protests back in 2005, but the much larg­er and more impor­tant Thrupp Lake has remained under threat ever since, as plan­ning, legal and oth­er bat­tles raged around it. As a last resort, local peo­ple even applied to have the area turned into a Town Green. This too failed, but it remains the sub­ject of a Judi­cial Review, which was due to be heard in the High Court in Feb­ru­ary 2009. In Feb­ru­ary 2007, hav­ing got all nec­es­sary plan­ning per­mis­sions and removed the pro­tes­tors who’d occu­pied the lake­side build­ing, npow­er went ahead with clear­ance work on the site, and many trees were destroyed. Work then had to stop until the Autumn, because of nest­ing birds. After car­ry­ing out some pre­lim­i­nary work in Octo­ber 2007, npow­er sud­den­ly ceased their activ­i­ties on the site.

Then, in Feb­ru­ary 2008, events took an unex­pect­ed turn: npow­er announced an inter­im reprieve for Thrupp Lake. A lit­tle lat­er, Waste Recy­cling Group (WRG) open­ly came for­ward with a pro­pos­al that would save Thrupp Lake for ever. It has tak­en until now to bring this to fruition. Plan­ning per­mis­sion was need­ed, tech­ni­cal prob­lems had to be resolved, a com­mer­cial agree­ment had to be reached; then there was the ques­tion of what to do with Thrupp Lake. Many del­i­cate nego­ti­a­tions, it seemed, were going on in the back­ground, cul­mi­nat­ing in yes­ter­day’s momen­tous announce­ment.

Tri­umph at Last!

To mark the occa­sion, the Pow­er Sta­tion oper­a­tors invit­ed press and pub­lic into the grounds of San­dles, the house on the shore Thrupp Lake. There, Mr John Rain­ford, the Pow­er Sta­tion man­ag­er, announced that, because the pow­er sta­tion had found bet­ter and more sus­tain­able ways of dis­pos­ing of its ash, there would be no need to destroy Thrupp Lake, not now, not ever. He made it clear that RWE npow­er was offer­ing The Lake to the local com­mu­ni­ty as a nature con­ser­va­tion area and that dis­cus­sions were under­way with the North­moor Trust to pro­vide for its man­age­ment. It was hoped that the house could be con­vert­ed into an edu­ca­tion­al cen­tre.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­mu­ni­ty, Jen­ny Standen, chair­man of Radley Parish Coun­cil, and Basil Crow­ley, chair­man of Save Radley Lakes, expressed their sat­is­fac­tion and delight, thank­ing npow­er for their mag­na­nim­i­ty and look­ing for­ward to work­ing with them in restor­ing the area to cre­ate some­thing to be real­ly proud of. Both expressed grat­i­tude to all the peo­ple who had sup­port­ed the cam­paign and whose sup­port and tire­less efforts had helped bring this about.

With the late Decem­ber after­noon sun­shine cast­ing long shad­ows across the ves­tiges of San­dles’ lawn, a jubi­lant par­ty atmos­phere pre­vailed. Cham­pagne flowed, hands were shak­en, cam­eras clicked and, in a touch of sur­re­al­i­ty, a man in a frog suit played a solo trom­bone fan­fare at the lake­side to her­ald the lake’s sal­va­tion.

Where the Ash Will Go

The ash that was to have gone into Thrupp Lake will now go to Waste Recy­cling Group’s Sut­ton Courte­nay land­fill site next to the pow­er sta­tion where it will be used for engi­neer­ing, cap­ping and land­scap­ing of the land­fill oper­a­tions. Sur­plus ash will be stock­piled in a planned new stor­age facil­i­ty, which received plan­ning per­mis­sion back in July, and will main­tain WRG’s essen­tial sup­ply of ash after 2015 when the pow­er sta­tion will have closed. Because the pow­er sta­tion and the waste site are imme­di­ate­ly adja­cent, the ash can be trans­port­ed direct­ly across the fence and put into the stock­pile, which is not far from the pow­er sta­tion bound­ary. At no time will this ash be trans­port­ed on pub­lic roads, which means there will be no adverse impact on the res­i­dents of Sut­ton Courte­nay. Indeed, it will remove the need to import over half a mil­lion tonnes of sub­sti­tute mate­ri­als after 2015, which would have had an impact!

http://www.saveradleylakes.org.uk/
http://www.radleyvillage.org.uk/news/News0009.htm