GLASGOW RESERVOIR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 314, 11 July 1930, Page 11

GLASGOW RESERVOIR

LARGEST IN SCOTLAND COST NEARLY A MILLION GLASGOW, May 12. The new reservoir at Camps, near Crawford, in Lanarkshire, which has taken 17 years to complete and is one of the largest of its kind in Scotland, was opened on May 9. The reservoir and gathering ground are capable of affording a daily supply of water to the county of about 8,000,000 gallons and the whole scheme is estimated to have cost £900,000. The Lanarkshire Middle Ward water supply area embraces the greater portion of the coalfields in the basin of the River Clyde outside the water supply area of the Airdrie, Coatbridge and District Water Board. The supply area extends from Harthill and Westeraigs on the east to Strathaven, Busby Burnside and Cambuslang on the west, and reaches northward into the Kelvin Valley at Twecher, Croy and Castlecary in Dumbartonshire, thus covering a total area of nearly 400 square miles, and varying in level from less than 100 feet to over 1000 feet above sea level. The total population supplied is over 200,000.

The new Camps Reservoir embankment, which cost about £400,000, is an earthen one with a puddle clay core or wall carried down into watertight rock across the valley. The embankment is about 90 feet high from the bed of the Camps Water, about 300 yards long across the valley, and about 170 yards in thickness at the bottom. The reservoir will have a storage capacity of about 2,100,000,000 gallons, which is only a very little short of the total storage of all the reservoirs of th e different water authorities in the county of Lanark.

The water is excellent in quality, and while it will be possible to filter the new supply through existing filters situated at Glassford and at Strutherill, near Larkhall, it is not proposed to do so unless in the case of exceptional storms.