Giant tunnel proposed to clean up Windermere's sewage problem
BBC Homepage
Skip to content
Accessibility Help
Your account
Home
News
Sport
Earth
Reel
Worklife
Travel
Culture
Future
Music
TV
Weather
Sounds
More
menu
Search BBC
Home
Climate
World
UK
Business
Tech
Science
Entertainment & Arts
Health
In Pictures
More
BBC Verify
Newsbeat
Science
Giant tunnel proposed to stop sewage being discharged into Windermere, England's largest lake
Image source: Getty Images
Image caption: Windermere sits at the heart of the iconic Lake District
By Jonah Fisher, Environment correspondent
Published 9 minutes ago
A £3.6 billion proposal to stop sewage being discharged into Windermere, England's largest lake, has been unveiled.
The plans, backed by the local water company United Utilities and clean water campaigners, would see a tunnel up to 12 miles (19km) long built to transport sewage away from the lake.
Currently, both raw sewage and treated effluent are discharged into Windermere, and campaigners say this is why parts of the lake have been turning green each summer, known as algal blooming.
The decision now rests with the government to determine if the plan can be further developed and if the £3.6 billion price tag is feasible.
The Lake District is a Unesco World Heritage Site and attracts nearly 18 million visitors annually, with Windermere at its heart, holding around 300 billion litres of water.
Louise Beardmore, chief executive of United Utilities, told the BBC the proposals represented a "100-year solution for this lake".
"In the UK we invest in five-year periods, and so we come along all the time and do a bit, then we go away and do a bit more. This is saying we need to do something differently," she said.
Beardmore expressed enthusiasm that a broad coalition, including her company, regulators, local authorities, and environmental campaigners, had come together to draft the proposal, titled "Only Rainwater into Windermere" (ORiW).
Perhaps surprisingly, Matt Staniek, founder of the Save Windermere group, called the proposal a "milestone".
"For me, this is a plan on a piece of paper. It is not definitive action and that's what I want to see," he said. "This is the beginning, and the end of this is the moment that sewage stops entering Windermere."
Next steps will see the government determine whether the plans are developed further and, if so, how.
Currently, the sewage network around Windermere is fragmented, with homes served by a mix of public wastewater treatment works and privately owned facilities and septic tanks.
When treatment works are overwhelmed, such as during heavy rain, they spill raw sewage. The rest of the time, they emit treated effluent containing high nutrient levels.
In recent years, high nutrient levels and warm temperatures have led to algal blooming, turning parts of the lake a bright green.
The ORiW proposal would see 12,800 people connected to the sewage network for the first time, with up to 86 miles (138km) of new infrastructure and a single wastewater treatment works at the end of a 4-meter-wide sewage tunnel.
Two slightly different plans are being put forward, both featuring the tunnel but with differing discharge points: one into the River Leven and the other into the Irish Sea at Ulverston.
The report outlines two funding options for the project.