Trust raises concerns about pollution in St Ouen’s Bay

Trust raises concerns about pollution in St Ouen’s Bay

The chief executive of the National Trust for Jersey, Charles Alluto, has said that the utility company’s plans were ‘simply not acceptable’ and only ‘kick the problem down the road’ in a way that will cause ‘devastating damage’ to St Ouen’s Pond.

A planning application for the £2 million Jersey Water project to protect the Island’s biggest reservoir was brought forward after the temporary closure of Val de la Mare in 2016, when traces of farming chemicals were detected in the water.

The proposal allows for a precautionary bypass system to divert surface water when feeder streams become polluted.

However, Mr Alluto maintains that because the bypass would terminate at the Val de la Mar dam and would not run off into the sea, the pollutants would flow downstream into St Ouen’s Pond.

‘While fully recognising that Jersey Water is not responsible for the pollution in itself, and that their priority is to safeguard the Island’s drinking water supply, we wholeheartedly believe that this issue has to be dealt with in a holistic manner, with key stakeholders and government authorities,’ he said. ‘It is simply not acceptable for a private company, in which the States has a majority shareholding, to “kick the problem down the road”, so to speak, in the knowledge that a major pollution incident could potentially cause devastating damage to the Island’s premier ecological site [St Ouen’s Pond].’

In a letter in Wednesday’s JEP, the chief executive of Jersey Water, Helier Smith, has responded to these objections, which have also been raised by environmentalist and JEP nature correspondent Bob Tompkins.

Mr Smith said that Jersey Water had received no objections to their planning application, despite the fact that Mr Alluto has said that a formal objection was submitted and that the National Trust had ‘expressed concern throughout the consultation period’.

‘The application, which remained open for consultation for many months, received no objections,’ Mr Smith says in his letter. ‘Throughout the planning process we consulted key stakeholders including the Environment Department and National Trust for Jersey. Letters were also sent to all properties in the vicinity of the bypass stream.’

Mr Smith added that independent experts had concluded that pollution from the bypass would be ‘negligible’.

‘When planning the bypass, Jersey Water was mindful of the potential influence the use of the bypass could have on the downstream environment,’ his letter adds. ‘We commissioned independent environmental experts to review the potential downstream effects of the bypass to provide comfort that its use wouldn’t be detrimental. Our experts concluded that the environmental impact of the bypass is, based on all available evidence, negligible.’

However, Mr Alluto said that there had been concerns about the lack of scientific data in the review commissioned by Jersey Water, and that the States should request Jersey Water to conduct a formal environmental impact assessment.

Mr Smith said that the threshold for drinking water pollution was far below the levels that might cause environmental damage.

‘The really important thing to note is that the levels we are using as a threshold for taking or not taking water are the drinking water regulation levels, which are much, much more cautious than levels that would be detrimental to the environment,’ he said.

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