Ruination of Heath by sheepish compliance

Published: 13 Ocotber, 2011

• IT seems beavers have got it all wrong.

The southern bank of Pond No 1 on Hampstead Heath is, as I write, being totally stripped of many of its mature trees.

The mass felling is being carried out, according to one of the operatives, on the instruction of the panel engineer and the Corporation of London chairman Michael Wellbank.

What is possessing these two key folk in sheepish compliance to the hapless and naive, environment-destroying but corporate pocket-filling, Reservoir Act, I cannot think.

The proposed Heath dams are being planned to counter a one-in-a-10,000-year event.

Their construction assumes the public living to the south of the Heath in Dartmouth Park and Gospel Oak will be oblivious or glued to a news-absent BSkyB in the event of a 40-day-and-night deluge.

This total madness is destroying our key local Heathland amenity, used and enjoyed by millions, and is affecting the conservation area.

And for what? Overkill health and safety-instigated compliance.

Roots enhance the efficacy of banks but probably, unlike beavers, the calculation is beyond the ken of the panel engineer and Corporation of London.

TOM BRENT
Address supplied, NW3