Welcome~Zapraszamy~Bienvenue~Willkommen~Bienvenido! September 2011...
...to the campaign site for the preservation of the Bath Road reservoir site in Reading!
This 150-year-old site covers 5.38 acres and lies to the north west of the Bath Road. It contains two underground reservoirs, covered entirely by vegetation. Isolated from human contact for the past 150 years, this site has been allowed to develop naturally into an ecosystem and a haven for wildlife, and has become home to a wide range of wildlife including protected species. Roebuck deer, badgers, owls, slow worms, muntjac, foxes, hedgehogs, and a variety of birds and butterfiles are just a few of the more commonly-sited creatures. The site is a wildlife oasis and an area of rare natural beauty. It provides a peaceful environment to the surrounding area, which is rarely found in town centres.
We understand the need for development, however this unique urban wildlife haven represents one of the
last remaining green spaces in the RG1 area. The magnificent Water Tower at the front is a Grade II listed building, and a number of trees on the site are also under legal protection,
and the railway embankment to the north west is a designated wildlife corridor.
We feel that if Reading is to remain a pleasant place to live, green spaces such as this one should be preserved. The site is currently owned by Thames Water who are planning to redevelop it into around 80 residential units, thereby destroying the site and a 150 year old ecosystem. So far we have been through one withdrawn application in 2008, one rejected application in 2009 and a dismissed appeal in 2010. However, a combination of Reading Borough Council's placing of the site on the Local Plan in 1996, and the Government Inspector's reasons behind her decision to dismiss the appeal in January 2011 mean that we as a campaign group can no longer use ecology, biodiversity, transport, parking, crime or sustainability as valid planning reasons to challenge Thames Water's imminent planning application. Density, height, damage to the setting of the Water Tower, and how appropriate/sympathetic their latest proposed development is to the surrounding area are all still major and valid considerations however. Please see the News and Help links for more detail and for how you can help.
Once it's gone, it's gone forever
Gerrald Durrell once said: "Remember that the animals and plants have no Member of Parliament they can write to; they can't perform sit-down strikes...they have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them, but do not own it."
Quoted from "Catch Me a Colobus"
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