Thames Water

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Brooming Lovely!

The Broom plant (Cytisus scoparius), after which Bromley is named, is now in full flower on Martins Hill. This despite ongoing encroachment from the more vigorous Bramble. It is sometimes confused with the more widespread Gorse, but unlike it Broom only flowers in late April and May. So now is the very best time to see it.

In order to manage this, and encourage the Broom to thrive, we were recently helped out by volunteers from Thames Water, as part of that companies ‘Giving Back’ scheme. Some eight enthusiastic volunteers, cut back a large area of encroaching Bramble. Despite the day being very hot they achieved a lot as can be seen in the following before and after images.

Bramble before & after work party

The Thames Water team (see below) had a good time while carrying out this important work. They were restricted in what we could do, in order to avoid nesting birds, and we intend to carry out more work like this later in the year.

Subsequently on Saturday 11th May we, along with Bromley Civic Society, organised an exhibition in The Glades entitled ‘Broomtime’, celebrating this plant and its continuing importance locally. Besides information boards there was an arbour for photographs, various children related activities, and walks to the site. Small sprigs of the plant were handed out to attendees. The Deputy Mayor and Mayoress also visited us, and were presented with a a Broom plant.

It was a successful event, despite ‘competing’ with the nearby noisy celebrations by Bromley FC of their promotion success. We hope to have a larger celebration next year. In the meantime you can find out more about Martins Hill and its Broom HERE.

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Mill Pond Pollution

Yet again the Mill Pond in Glassmill Lane has been polluted, this time with either petrol or light diesel oil. This was spotted on Saturday morning and reported to the Environment Agency. Thames Water staff have now fitted booms to contain the problem, both at the entrance to the pond, as well as downstream just inside Queens Mead.

An earlier pollution incident

This incident is particularly worrying as it comes when ducks etc are starting breeding. Already several moorhen chicks have been lost. This also greatly impacts smaller invertebrates living in the water or silt. In the absence of any rainfall it is to be sincerely hoped that this pollutant will soon dissipate. This part of the Ravensbourne is sadly recognised by Thames Water as a portion ‘hot spot’, with illegal dumping and domestic plumbing misconnections. They are having some difficulties locating many of the sources of such pollution.

The Mill Pond is currently the subject of a plan to upgrade this historic pond. Led by Thames21, with support from the Friends of Bromley Town Parks & Gardens, Environment Agency, Thames Water, etc. it is hoped that funding for this can be agreed in the coming months. In the meantime you can find out more about our plans at http://bit.ly/2hrtoyp

If you wish to get more immediately involved in volunteer days at the Mill Pond please contact chair@bromleytownparks.org.uk

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Mill Pond Polluted Again!

Illustrates an example of pollution on Mill Pond.
Latest pollution incident on Mill Pond

There continues to be pollution of the Mill Pond, in Glassmill Lane, Bromley. so the water has become cloudy khaki coloured in appearance. This has been reported and Thames Water have been tasked to investigate. There is some suggestion that this may be related to a burst water main in the Masons Hill area earlier today. We await any further news. The appearance has been made worse by the current very low flow rate on the River Ravensbourne due to the recent lack of rain. Any significant rain should eventually disperse this downstream and into the Thames.

There have been many previous pollution incidents here. These are often the result of incorrect waste connections in either domestic or business premises. Thames Water along with the Environment Agency are working to identify such incidents and identify the culprits.

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Pollution on Ravensbourne

Polluted Mill Pond 29 July

Pollution on Mill Pond 29 July – photo by Kari Silvester

Kari Silvester and some other members continue to monitor pollution incidents on the Mill Pond, in Glassmill Lane. Many of these are due to mis-connections of waste water outlets in parts of the surrounding areas. Kari has been liaising with the Environment Agency (EA) on such incidents. The latter have identified this as a misconnections ‘hot spot’ and are working with Thames water to identify and eliminate them.

Kari has recently recede this brief EA report –

I just wanted to give you a brief update, my colleague and I were out in the Bromley area on Friday and, with the help of Thames Water, discovered a source of pollution to the Ravensbourne river near Bromley South station. Due to data protection I
cannot provide further details but as this location was upstream of Glassmill Pond you should hopefully see an improvement to the water quality there, although the Environment Agency and Thames Water still have a long way to go in locating all the sources of pollution leading to this point. It is good news nevertheless and please let us know if you have any questions.

If you spot any such incidents please telephone the Environment Agency on 0208 474 9439

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Mill Pond: More Pollution

Polluted Mill Pond 29 July

Pollution on Mill Pond 29 July – photo by Kari Silvester

There was yet another pollution incident on the River Ravensbourne, at Mill Pond, Glassmill Lane on 29 July. This appeared to be sand, like an earlier incident, and which covered most of the pond surface. This was reported to the Environment Agency (ref: 1544086) by a Friends member. The long term environmental impact of this latest incident is currently uncertain.The pollution has subsequently been moving down stream. We await the result of this latest EA investigation.

Recently there have been an increased number of such incidents, some very serious. These incidents are the result of either unauthorised mis-connection of waste water outlets (e.g. sinks), or the illegal emptying of waste into local surface water drains or water courses.  The Environmental Agency, working with Thames Water, consider this a pollution ‘hot spot’, and the Mill Pond is being closely monitored by local volunteers and reported to the EA. If you spot pollution in our local rivers please report to the Environment Agency on 0800 807060