Thames Water pipe floods rare meadow for fourth time — SkimNews
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- Long Mead Local Wildlife Site was flooded for the fourth time by a burst Thames Water main, with standing water discovered on 1 September — the day a planned restoration project was due to start addressing the previous floods.
- Catriona Bass, director of the Long Mead Foundation, warned that summer flooding kills growing plants, unlike natural winter flooding when plants are dormant, adding the water 'is already starting to stagnate'.
- Thames Water apologized for the disruption and said the repair in Bettys Meadow took longer than expected because heavy rainfall prevented engineers from safely accessing the pipework.
- The conservation programme risks losing a secured grant if restoration work is not completed in time, according to the charity's director.
- Volunteers at the donor site have hand-grown more than 11,500 specialist plants used to restore similar floodplain habitats across Oxfordshire.
- Floodplain meadow is among Britain's rarest habitats, with only four square miles remaining nationally — roughly the area of Heathrow Airport.
Why it matters: Long Mead acts as a seed donor for restoring rare floodplain meadow across Oxfordshire, so a fourth summer flood jeopardizes not just one site but a county-wide restoration programme and the grant that funds it. With only four square miles of this habitat left in the country, repeated Thames Water mains failures are degrading an irreplaceable ecological resource.
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