Environment Agency

WATER RESOURCES ACT 1991

NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR A LICENCE TO ABSTRACT WATER

Take notice that John Raker, of Croxton Park Farm, Croxton Park, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 1LS, is applying to the Environment Agency to vary licence serial number 6/33/48/G/254. The variation is to remove or modify or add to the conditions attached to the licence.
The existing licence has ten conditions. The purpose of this application is to vary condition 10 of the licence, namely, “Further Provisions” in the following ways:

(i) removed condition 10a which sets a control on abstraction volumes based on the elevation of groundwater level at borehole TL99/27 (NGR TL 9160 9726) which is located 2 km to the north north-west of the Thompson Water, Carr and Common Site of Special Scientific Interest. The reason to remove this condition is that it is arbitrary and serves no useful purpose.
(ii) add the following sentence to the end of condition 10(b), namely: “provided that the licence holder shall be under no obligation to provide the aforesaid works and monitoring unless the Agency shall have previously provided to the licence holder a technical justification of the reasons in each case for gathering each set of monitoring data, the exact methods by which those data will be processed by the Agency and the analytical methods that will be used by the Agency to intepret those data. In addition the Agency will provide to the licence holder a precise description of the quantitative criteria that it will apply to the interpretation of the data to determine whether harm has occured or is occurring to the SSSI.”
(iii) remove clauses 1 and 2 from the appendix linked to condition 10(b). The reason for this is that the monitoring specified in those clauses serves no useful purpose and is superceded by other monitoring already installed by the licence holder.
(iv) modify condition 10(c) by removing the words “. . . monitoring information collected under 10(b).” and inserting after “. . . English Nature with . . .” and before “. . . at three monthly intervals . . .” the words “data recorded by datalogger and manually measured borehole water levels specified under 10(a).” Further modify clause 10(c) by adding the sentences “Monitoring data collected by the Agency from dataloggers and manually measured boreholes in the area will be supplied to the licence holder at the same frequency. The Agency will produce an interpretative report on the results or monitoring at twelve monthly intervals and obtain the prompt response of the other interested parties to the interpretative report.”
(v) to the existing section headed “Reasons for Conditions”, remove paragraph one and replace paragraph two with the following: “Provision 10(a) has been included to provide information on Thompson Water, Carr and Common Site of Special Scientific Interest, to provide information to support renewal of the licence in four years time, to ensure that acceptable professionable standards are applied to analyses of data and to ensure that the data being gathered are seen to be relevant to resolving the issue of impact of abstraction on the SSSI.”
(vi) to the existing section headed “Reasons for Conditions” replace “10(c)” in paragraph 3 with 10(b).

A copy of the application, map and other documents submitted with it may be inspected, free of charge, at all reasonable hours, at The Merton Farming Company, Merton Estate Office, Merton near Watton, Thetford between 24 July 2002 and 24 August 2002.
Any person who wishes to make representations about the application should do so in writing to the Environment Agency, Anglian Region, Bromholme Lane, Brampton, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE18 8NE, before the end of the said period.
J Raker, on behalf of Land & Water Resource Consultants
24 July 2002.