Water

Water - there's plenty of water in Wales and Scotland and not enough in parts of England. Now people are talking about creating a water grid to move water around Britain. Others are starting to talk again about building new reservoirs to supplu water for the dry parts of England.

People have been drowning areas of Wales to create reservoirs to carry water to England for over 100 years. In 1892 the city of Liverpool built the Llyn Efyrnwy (Lake Vyrnwy) reservoir and between 1893 and 1904 the city of Birmingham built a number of reservoirs in the Elan Valley.

In the 1950s and '60s there was much protesting in Wales when Liverpool and Birmingham wanted to drown more areas of Wales. The Government in London was not ready to listen to the voice of the Welsh poeple and the city of Liverpool was given permission to drown the village of Capel Celyn and the Tryweryn valley near Bala to create Llyn Celyn reservoir. In 1965 on the Clywedog River in the mountains near Llanidloes they began to build a huge new reservoir to store water for the people of the Birmingham area; Llyn Clywedog opened in 1967.

No-one has drowned an area of Wales to store water for England since the 1960s, but will things change in the future? And would the people of Wales be willing to flood a few valleys if they could sell their water to England?