October 2021
Thames Tideway Tunnel: latest news from the Greenwich Pumping Station
from Mick Delap, ATA rep for Deptford Creek developments
Do you want the good news for West Greenwich first? Or the Not-so-good??
There are lots of positive developments, as Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT) push on with linking our Greenwich Pumping Station sewage site on Norman Road with the new Super Sewer, at Bermondsey (just below Tower Bridge). That’s 4.5 kilometres away, and TTT are building the new Greenwich Connection Tunnel so that they don’t have to pump raw sewage from Greenwich straight into the Thames whenever heavy rain fills up the existing sewers. When the Connection Tunnel is finished, it will safely divert any overflow to the Super Sewer. After long preparation, the tunnel boring machine, Annie, has been digging away. She has now got one third of the way to the end of the Connection Tunnel at Bermondsey – 1.5 kilometres – with everything that’s needed for the tunnel, and everything that has to be taken back out from the tunnel going in and coming out at the Greenwich end. And TTT have also just announced they have also installed their one thousandth Tunnel Ring. The rings are the large semi-circular concrete rings which turn the basic rough tunnel into a proper sewer. You may have seen them recently trundling steadily into Norman Road on the back of a lorry, to be lowered 50 metres down the access shaft, and taken along the Connection Tunnel to where they are needed. You will probably also have noticed that there are many more spoil lorries coming back out of Norman Road, carrying away dirt from the tunnel. The two bits of even better news here are, first, that TTT is also taking about a third of the total tunnel spoil away on barges, as it promised. And secondly, that the TTT lorry traffic in and out of Norman Road, though now running at a higher rate, seems to be operating smoothly. They hope to have finished the Connection Tunnel by Spring 2022.
If you have any concerns about this, there is an online meeting of TTT’s Community Liaison Working Group on Tuesday 12th October from 6.30 to 8.00. Anyone can attend. But you will need to email TTT at getinvolved@tideway.london to get joining instructions. Or contact TTT direct.
So what’s the NOT-so-good news? Well, at the same meeting this coming Tuesday, TTT will be talking about the application they have made to Greenwich Planning to finalise how they will sort out the Greenwich Pumping Station site when they finish tunnelling – starting sometime in mid-2022. And at first glance, it doesn’t seem that there’s nearly as much in their plans about improving public access or giving us better amenity in the public realm along their part of the Creek (the bit that runs from Norman Road up to the Halfpenny Hatch Footbridge) as we had hoped. Nor about helping our proposed CreekLink Heritage Trail tell the story of the 19th century Bazalgette Pumping Station, and what’s going on in the Creek now, in the 21st century.
We’ll be finding out more about all this from TTT at the Community Liaison Working Group meeting this coming Tuesday, 12th October, and giving you an update afterwards.
More info from TTT at getinvolved@tideway.london or from mick@delap.plus.com
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