Bewl Water Management.

Authors Avatar
Bewl Water Management

Bewl Water Reservoir is a major water management scheme in the South East of England, a reservoir that is vital to the water scheme in this area. It is a 1200-acre site that began construction in 1973. Its geographical location meant that it wasn't selected due to a large catchment area, which usually is the case. Bewl actually has a very small catchment area for its size, meaning on paper it isn't very efficient at gaining water for storage.

There were other factors complimenting the building of Bewl Reservoir. It was in a sparsely populated area where the potential disruption was limited meaning the added economic cost was minor. In all only two farmhouses were actually moved, so the social impact was limited too. The environmental impact was also limited due to the fact that the land was mainly farmland with small ecological diversity or rare species. The topography of the land was the major factor due to the contours of the land meaning the water collected will culminate in one area creating the reservoir. The construction would be relatively easy and the cost could be controlled due to the availability of local sandstone and clay. The mass amount of wealden clay in the area created a waterproof layer to the reservoir meaning little reservoir water will be lost to infiltration, and when conserving water was the major purpose this was an important fact.

In 1975 the newly built dam was flooded at a total cost of £6.9m meaning, for the time being the reservoir was complete. But at this stage its management wasn't very effective as the only output it possessed was via the River Teise. Therefore the plans to physically connected Bewl to the River Medway's influence went ahead. A 22km pipeline from Bewl to the Yalding pumping station at a cost of £23m. This combated the problem of the limitations of the Bewl Catchment area. As mentioned earlier Bewl's catchment is very small, this means that the water collected through precipitation is very limited. The pipeline would allow 386 million litres of water to be pumped to Bewl per day through the 1.5m diameter pipe. This meant that the stability of the Bewl scheme was under threat as in the long run it wouldn't be able to support itself due to the lack of inputs to the reservoir.
Join now!


This pipeline combated this problem really effectively as increasing the inputs to the reservoir kept water levels high and stability remained. But recently there has been more change to Bewl reservoir. The Bewl to Darwell water transfer scheme was created, creating a major change to events at Bewl.

The Bewl-Darwell Water Transfer Scheme is a £25 million project being carried out by Southern Water and South East Water to help safeguard water supplies. The companies are installing a 29km pipeline to Darwell Reservoir. From hear it will connect to Hazard's Green Water Supply Works at Ninfield.
...

This is a preview of the whole essay