The crumbs from Severn Trent Water's table

Barristers are an interesting breed. They're articulate and well educated. But give them a sniff of blood and they're a different animal altogether. You'd want them all to be on your side, but not on the other side.

So it was today with the crumbling proposal from Hallam Land to rustle up a water treatment facility at Packington Sewage Works. They have a difficult target to hit on the baseline level of phosphates that can be in the River Mease Special Area of Conservation. Hallam had said it would be some time before Severn Trent Water could put the necessary permanent equipment in place, so for a mere £50k a lorry would turn up, install some stuff and hey presto, problem has gone away. Then it will be a mere £600k for the permanent kit. It's expected to last 15 years. But what of the operating costs? asked the Environment Agency's barrister. Long pauses from their expert witness. Thereafter it's everyone who will have to pay and no account has been taken of other developments that might happen in the town. Will they really all have their own bits of kit taking the phosphates out of water from their site. He was forced to admit the whole thing was a "rush job". You could feel the Hallam team cringe.

The fact is that Severn Trent Water haven't agreed to anything. It's just that Hallam are hoping they would. A so-called Grampian agreement would require that the work was done "before a sod of earth" is lifted at the Packington Nook site. After all, if the measures proposed by Hallam don't work, they're hardly going to evict householders and demolish the houses already built.

And what of the Water Cycle survey, that's expect to be complete by the start of 2010? That's likely to show that the better sites are those to the north of the town that stand a better chance of draining elsewhere. No wonder Hallam are in a hurry to have Packington Nook in the bag before then.

Then up with their flooding expert. The measures proposed to reduce flooding in Packington aren't being disputed by the council. So we asked him why it was, that if Packington was going to be protected, the vast majority of Packington parishoners were against this development. Well,they're not concerned for the benefit of the 5 or so houses that are regularly flooded, speculated the Hallam witness. Well,maybe. But the reality is that they don't want a flood scheme at the expense of a massive development on their doorstep.

Blood, as they say, is thicker than water...