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The River Trent is the third-longest river in the United Kingdom. Its source is in Staffordshire on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains most of the metropolitan central and northern Midlands south and east of its source north of Stoke-on-Trent. The river is known for dramatic flooding after storms and spring snowmelt, which in past times often caused the river to change course.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) was a United Kingdom government department created by the Board of Agriculture Act 1889 and at that time called the Board of Agriculture, and then from 1903 the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, and from 1919 the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. It attained its final name in 1955 with the addition of responsibilities for the British food industry to the existing responsibilities for agriculture and the fishing industry, a name that lasted until the Ministry was dissolved in 2002, at which point its responsibilities had been merged into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
Severn Trent Water Limited is a water company based in the United Kingdom that is part of the Severn Trent plc group, traded on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Severn Trent, the trading name owned by the company, applies to a group of companies employing more than 15,000 people across the United Kingdom, United States and mainland Europe, with some involvement in the Middle East. It took its name from the two predecessor River Authorities, which managed the catchment of the Severn and the Trent.
The River Idle is a river in Nottinghamshire, England. Its source is the confluence of the River Maun and River Meden, near Markham Moor. From there, it flows north through Retford and Bawtry before entering the River Trent at Stockwith near Misterton. The county boundary with South Yorkshire follows the river for a short distance near Bawtry, and the border with Lincolnshire does the same at Idle Stop. Originally, it flowed northwards from Idle Stop to meet the River Don on Hatfield Chase, but was diverted eastwards by drainage engineers in 1628.
The National Rivers Authority (NRA) was one of the forerunners of the Environment Agency of England and Wales, existing between 1989 and 1996.
Stoke Bardolph is a village and civil parish in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 170. It is to the east of Nottingham, and on the west bank of the River Trent. Nearby places include Burton Joyce and Radcliffe on Trent.
Hatfield Chase is a low-lying area in South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, England, which was often flooded. It was a royal hunting ground until Charles I appointed the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden to drain it in 1626. The work involved the re-routing of the Rivers Don, Idle and Torne, and the construction of drainage channels. It was not wholly successful, but changed the whole nature of a wide swathe of land including the Isle of Axholme and caused legal disputes for the rest of the century. The civil engineer John Smeaton looked at the problem of wintertime flooding in the 1760s, and some remedial work was carried out.
The Water Act 1973 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reorganised the water, sewage and river management industry in England and Wales. Water supply and sewage disposal were removed from local authority control, and ten larger regional water authorities were set up, under state control based on the areas of super-sets of river authorities which were also subsumed into the new authorities. Each regional water authority consisted of members appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment, and by the various local authorities in its area.
River boards were authorities who controlled land drainage, fisheries and river pollution and had other functions relating to rivers, streams and inland waters in England and Wales between 1950 and 1965.
River authorities controlled land drainage, fisheries and river pollution in rivers, streams and inland waters in England and Wales between 1965 and 1973.
Manuscripts and Special Collections is part of Libraries, Research and Learning Resources at the University of Nottingham. It is based at King's Meadow Campus in Nottingham in England. The University has been collecting manuscripts since the early 1930s and now holds approximately 3 million documents, extensive holdings of Special Collections, and the East Midlands Collection of local material, all of which are available for researchers to use in the supervised Wolfson Reading Rooms.
An internal drainage board (IDB) is a type of operating authority which is established in areas of special drainage need in England and Wales with permissive powers to undertake work to secure clean water drainage and water level management within drainage districts. The area of an IDB is not determined by county or metropolitan council boundaries, but by water catchment areas within a given region. IDBs are geographically concentrated in the Broads, Fens in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, Somerset Levels and Yorkshire.
Severn Trent Water Authority was one of ten regional water authorities established in 1974. Its area of operation was the catchments of the River Trent and River Severn. It assumed the powers and responsibilities of existing water supply authorities in those catchment areas, the Severn River Authority, the Trent River Authority and the sewage and sewage disposal responsibilities of the councils within its area.
The City of Nottingham Water Department (1912–1974), formerly the Nottingham Corporation Water Department (1880–1912), was responsible for the supply of water to Nottingham from 1880 to 1974. The first water supply company in the town was the Nottingham Waterworks Company, established in 1696, which took water from the River Leen, and later from springs at Scotholme, when the river became polluted. Other companies were set up in the late 18th century and in 1824, while in 1826 the Trent Water Company was established. They employed Thomas Hawksley as their engineer, who became one of the great water engineers of the period, and Nottingham had the first constant pressurised water supply system in the country. The various companies amalgamated in 1845, and Hawksley remained as the consulting engineer until 1879.
Regional water authorities came into existence in England and Wales in April 1974, as a result of the passing of the Water Act 1973. This brought together in ten regional units a diverse range of bodies involved in water treatment and supply, sewage disposal, land drainage, river pollution and fisheries. They lasted until 1989, when the water industry was privatised and the water supply and sewerage and sewage disposal parts became companies and the regulatory arm formed the National Rivers Authority. Regional water authorities were also part of the Scottish water industry when three bodies covering the North, West and East of Scotland were created in 1996, to take over responsibilities for water supply and sewage treatment from the regional councils, but they only lasted until 2002, when they were replaced by the publicly owned Scottish Water.
The Land Drainage Act 1961 was an Act of Parliament passed by the United Kingdom Government which provided mechanisms for river boards to raise additional finance to fund their obligations. It built upon the provisions of the Land Drainage Act 1930 and the River Boards Act 1948.
The Water Resources Act 1963 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that continued the process of creating an integrated management structure for water, which had begun with the passing of the Land Drainage Act 1930. It created river authorities and a Water Resources Board. River authorities were responsible for conservation, re-distribution and augmentation of water resources in their area, for ensuring that water resources were used properly in their area, or were transferred to the area of another river authority. The river authorities covered the areas of one or more of the river boards created under the River Boards Act 1948, and inherited their duties and responsibilities, including those concerned with fisheries, the prevention of pollution, and the gauging of rivers. It did not integrate the provision of public water supply into the overall management of water resources, but it introduced a system of charges and licenses for water abstraction, which enabled the river authorities to allocate water to potential users. This included the water supply agencies, who now needed their supplies to be licensed.
The Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975 is a law passed by the government of the United Kingdom in an attempt to protect salmon and trout from commercial poaching, to protect migration routes, to prevent willful vandalism and neglect of fisheries, ensure correct licensing and water authority approval. This helps to sustain the rural inland freshwater fisheries industry, which employs around 37,000 people in the UK.
The Water Act 1989 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reorganised the bodies responsible for all aspects of water within England and Wales. Whereas previous legislation, particularly the Water Act 1973, had focused on providing a single unifying body with responsibility for all water-related function within a river basin or series of river basins, this legislation divided those functions up again, with water supply, sewerage and sewage disposal being controlled by private companies, and the river management, land drainage and pollution functions becoming the responsibility of the National Rivers Authority.
The River Boards Act 1948 was an Act of Parliament passed by the United Kingdom Government which provided constitutional, financial and general administrative structures for River Boards, which were responsible for the management of river board areas, and superseded the catchment boards that had been set up under the Land Drainage Act 1930.
References
- Trent Water Authority – Official Handbook (1973)