Under the Reservoir Act 1975

All owners of this type of Reservoir have to have a Break Plan which shows what actions will be taken in the case of a sudden catastrophic failure (includes sadly how many people could die hence these Plans are not in the public domain) as well as a Plan for what you would do to reduce the capacity by 50% (from full) in a set amount of days. You then have to put the infrastructure in place to ensure (to the Governments Reservoir Inspectors and Environment Agency - because you're returning a huge amount of water back suddenly to the environment- satisfaction) the Plan can be met. These structures and the monitoring equipment (piezometers etc) are surveyed and inspected annually under the Act.

Posted By: Old Splat, Aug 3, 09:35:00