environment

Vol. 11 No. 1 2004
changes: a Great Western Hotel at Lea Marston for
enthusiastic golfers at £138 per night! And even more
photographs showing a wooded wetlands inconceivable
30 years ago.
The cleanup works was not a cure, though, for the
dirtiest river of England. It was a preventive measure to
stop the dirt travelling all the way downstream to the
Humber. It is now being cleaned at its source. Soon Lea
Marston works may be also industrial relic. There are
various studies going on to clean up the river and it is
found that the water still has insufficient oxygen and
too much ammonia. In figure 2 is shown the general
plan of the works in 1973 and in figure 3 a brochure I
obtained at the by then (1985) a completely changed
landscape. Attached in figure 4 are photographs I took
in 1985 and a few I downloaded from the web. I have
added a bibliography for those interested in how
environmental awareness has become ingrained into
society; if only they knew what it was like back in 1973.
modelling of the Birmingham Tame, Int. Conf. On Water
QualityModelling in the Natural Environment,
Bournemouth, p9-25
Pullin, J. 1976 Lakes will take the pollution load off Old
Father Tame, Surveyor, v148 n4410 p7-9
Thompson, J.L. 1979 River Tame Purification Schemedevelopment
and design, Paper presented to the
Institution Water Engineers and Scientists.
Reference
Binnie and Partners 1974 Geotechnical appraisal of
contract No. 2 December 1973 Site Investigations on
River Tame Purification Scheme
Woods, D.R., Green, M.B., and Parish, R.C. 1984 Lea
Marsten Purification Lake: Operational and River-
Quality Aspects, Water Pollution Control v83 n2 p226-
242
Selection bibliography on River Tame:
Anon 2003 SMURF Project Methodology and
Techniques, Environment Agency King’s College
London University of Birmingham and HR Wallingford
Ltd 162p
Beavan, L., Sadler, J. and Pinder, C. 2000 The invertebrate
fauna of a physically modified urban river, Hydrobiologia
v445 97-108
Booker, D, Dunbar, M, Stratford, C. Latimer, Rogerson,
H. Bass,B. Dawson,H Gozlan,R Welton,S Ash,J. Fenn,T.
Postle, M. 2003 Heavily Modified Waters in Europe;
Case Study on the Tame Catchment (Case Study
submitted by the Environment Agency of England &
Wales and the UK Government Department for Food,
Environment and Rural Affairs) Edited by Michael
Dunbar (CEH Wallingford) 104p
Crabtree, B., Hickman, M. and Martin, D. 1999, Integrated
water quality and environmental cost-benefit modelling
for the management of the River Tame, Wat. Sci. Tech.
V39 n4 pp213-220
Martin, J.R. and Green, M.B. 1986 Water quality
47