| Topic: | Re: Mogden clarification; Thames Tunnel costs impact on customers' bills. | |
| Posted by: | Nick Tennant | |
| Date/Time: | 11/03/11 21:37:00 |
| To clarify, there would be five discharges over the 12 years, not five discharges every year, when the work at Mogden is complete. The projected cost for the Thames Tunnel is £3.6bn. Ofwat, the water industry's independent economic regulator, will decide how the construction costs should be included in the bills of our 14 million wastewater customers. We expect that the total costs of building and operating the tunnel will require our average bill to rise by slightly more than than a £1 a week by 2018. This means our charges, for a long time among the lowest in the country, would rise to around the national average. The development costs associated with taking the project forward to the submission of a planning application are included in bills approved for this five year period. The same applies to the important improvements underway at Mogden and the other four sewage treatment works on the tidal Thames. Ditto the £600 million Lee Tunnel project, under construction to tackle the combined sewer overflow at Abbey Mills in Newham, which volume wise discharges the most sewage into the River Thames (via the River Lee). |