Posted By Tony O'Keefe John, I believe in theory that this would not be protected, but if it has attracted certain wildlife it could well fall in to the scope of a sensitive habitat. Though I stand to be corrected. Tony O'Keefe

Posted By Phil.D.Baptiste Whoops, meant to add: as far as I am aware, (and this comes from having to research the groundwater regs and in consultation with British waterways and the BTCV)..... this does not have to visably connect either, it may be that the there is connection through the watertable! If this 'pond' is totally isolated, impermeable, and unlikely to lead to inadvertant contact then no....you are OK....presumably this is just going to be a pond and not a vat for the acid disposal of enemies????

Posted By J Knight Its a question about a number of 'water features' we have knocking about the place (or places in fact); ranging from a Victorian concrete swimming tank with Great Crested Newts, to early 20th Century artificial lakes, to vinyl/butyl lined ponds dug some time in the last few years. I've done a course on this stuff, but it didn't actually address the question of when is protected water protected. It gave the impression that all surface water, of whatever type and however it is contained and whenever it came into existence, is protected; I doubt this and judging by responses so far it looks as though my doubts have some justification. We don't intend to do anything with any of the ponds, lakes or whatever at the moment but it always helps to know about these things in advance is my feeling, John

Posted By Di Mason Hello So far as I am aware, controlled waters are rivers, inland surface and underground waters, estuaries and territorial waters and the interest of the EA is restricted to the criminal offence of polluting said waters and licencing those who discharge into them. The pollution can occur either due to breach of a consent to discharge into controlled waters or by uncontrolled runoff or other event. Does this help? Not sure.... Di

Posted By Jonathan Breeze Last time I did that John, the company I worked for at the time had a visit and a notice issued. They seem to take a totally different line to HSE about people seeking advice.

Posted By Jonathan Breeze I'm not saying don't - just be aware that they have a different set of criteria to HSE or the LA pollution control office. For all I know he may have been suffering toothache at the time, or been in a very unhappy relationship. Perhaps you need to do trawl of the EA website to check for guidelines first and generally exhaust all other options.

Posted By Jonathan Breeze Yup! You're very good (either that or I'm transparent). The whole experience was very reminiscent of an audience with Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. For those of you gentle readers who have no idea what this may be like, then please see here for details: http://www.globusz.com/e...Hitchhikers/00000016.htm

Posted By J Knight Hi David, Ah, well, I quite agree that technically it was out fault, duty of care and all that, but as it happens we had checked his paperwork, and up until the event in question he seems to have been doing the job properly, so I feel that morally we had been trying to do the right thing. I do agree that we could have done more, but it was all before my time and we were a bit naieve, John

Posted By J Knight Hi Steve, thanks for your response; natural waters makes sense, as I find it hard to believe that the EA would intervene in the management of a garden pond (provided of course it had no outlet to controlled ground or surface water)! It still leaves some unanswered questions though, as some of our waters are almost certainly not 'natural' in that they would have been created, but this creation would have been quite a long time ago, for example the pond at Nettlebed is over a hunderd years old, while that at Leckhampton dates back over 600 years. Does age make something natural? We're OK about the newts, we know about their requirements and English Nature does as well; our problem is that they keep getting lost in the cellars (for some reason) on the way to the pond, and staff find their shrivelled bodies at regular intervals in spring, John

Posted By Aidan Toner All good stuff for the she people BUT honestly I would be happier following the chit chat between the ducks swimming on the top of this pond-lake. Yours sincerely A safety type person.