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Dozens of large reservoirs in Britain that should have been registered and
inspected for safety under the 1975 Reservoirs Act have slipped through the
net, according to a review for the National Rivers Authority.

Chris Birks, head of the NRA’s flood defence unit, says that up to a hundred
flood storage reservoirs, which fill whenever rivers are full, were not
registered by the water authorities before they were privatised.

The oversight was uncovered in a review of the NRA’s role in dam safety,
submitted to the authority by consultant Michael Kennard in April. It is due
to be discussed by the NRA at a special meeting next month. According to
David Pelleymounter, the NRA’s flood defence manager in the Yorkshire
region, it will take up to ten years to bring all the structures up to
scratch.

The Kennard report has brought to a head growing unease within the NRA about
its responsibilities if any of the estimated 2000 large reservoirs in
England and Wales fails, causing a disaster. Most of the largest structures
are owned by the privatised water companies.

‘The NRA is looking to assess its responsibilities,’ says Birks. ‘One
fraught issue is the question of warning the public in case of a dam
failure. No act of parliament says that anybody will fulfil any particular
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Colin Green of the Flood Hazard Research Centre at Middlesex University,
which is investigating flood warning procedures for the NRA, suggests that
large dams should be treated like dangerous factories, for which disaster
plans are required under the European Commission’s Seveso directive.

‘The public living below reservoirs should be told about the existence of
the hazard, and what to do in case of an emergency, as they are with
factories,’ says Green. Floods, he says, travel faster than toxic gases a
factory might release into the air. ‘My own estimate is that, with an
emergency plan, 50 per cent of the people in the disaster zone could be
casualties, but without one, as we are now, the figure could be 80 per
cent,’ says Green. He claims that many in the water industry agree with his
views. ‘The traditional attitude has been that our dams can never fail. But
many people say we should think the unthinkable.’

The Department of the Environment says that planning for civil emergencies,
including dam failures, is the responsibility of local authorities under the
1972 Local Government Act.