It’s a sewage superhighway that will take more than eighteen months to build.
Southern Water wants to install more than four kilometres of pipeline between the village and our town.
Engineers call it an aqueduct – to the rest of us it’s a fat pipe of poo.
Some work has started already but the water company is waiting for the South Downs National Park Authority to complete a “screening” process for an Environmental Impact Assessment of the plan.
Why is the pipeline proposed?
Southern Water must meet strict new environmental standards at its Buriton waste treatment works but space there is limited, so it plans to pump Buriton’s effluent into Petersfield instead.
The turd lane
Once the work is complete you won’t see the pipe.
The proposed aqueduct will sit up to four and a half metres below the ground and take a route through some much loved local countryside.
It will cross fourteen hedgerows as it passes from Buriton, to Nursted Farm, then along a stretch of Sussex Road close to Stanbridge Farm.
Finally the poo pipe will cross fields South of Rival Moor Road before terminating in the Petersfield sewage works near Penns Place.
What do local people say?
Buriton Parish Council represents villagers. It does not oppose the plan but it points out that the route could affect local wildlife sites, ancient woodlands, trees, hedges, field margins, watercourses and a wide range of species.
It asked that lessons are learnt from recent projects through the South Downs such as the Esso Pipeline and the Rampion project which is says have left scars on the landscape.
The parish insists that local farmers must be able to access their land and animals at all times and should be inconvenienced as little as possible.
When will it happen?
Some preliminary ground works have started already but Southern Water says the project will take 18 months to complete so the pipeline is unlikely to be in service before early 2025.
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