Readers letters
I now live in a Village in north Hampshire where the water supply came from wells, and then from two deep boreholes installed by the Norman Court estate. The water quality was first class. The water company then decided to take water from the river Test and mothballed the boreholes. Most of the many boreholes in the Hampshire Basin have also been closed down, For example the 7 installed by Romsey Brewery to produce their high quality beer.
The only borehole extracting water in this area now is for very expensive bottled water
The Hampshire Basin is a water tight chalk basin, with a layer of green sand into which the water flows, and this layer is capped by London clay. It is necessary to drill through this barrier to reach the water.
The basin acts as a large reservoir. If not extracted the water is lost into the sea in the gap in the basin caused by the formation of the Solent.
The basin is large and extends from Chichester to Swanage along the coast, and from The Isle of Wight north to Salisbury Plain.
Six wells at Fawley extracted over 3million gallons a day, but are no longer in use.
This large water reserve could be used in dry summers to provide large volumes of water along the South Coast. The water extracted closest to the point of need.
The water level would be monitored, to ensure efficient utilization of this water source. Water could also be extracted to ensure that the overflow of water around the rim from the sand does not cause localised flooding of areas within the basin, These now occur every five or six years.
I am sure there must be many areas with similar water reserves that could be utilised. I recently spoke to a person now involved at exploratory drilling along the South Coast. So far they have only found water?
Ray Lodge, a long time member
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