This has been a very interesting discussion and like any good debate - challenging at times. What no one has mentioned though is the burden that new developments places on our rivers, which I also consider to be sacred. The River Kennet for example always 'runs' dry near to its source in the summer - I've mentioned before that it used to service the new housing development on the southern edge of Swindon. I suppose we have accepted by now that the water that comes out of our taps has flushed a few toilets in it the past.

The time is not far away when water will become as expensive an utility as power - yet it always seems to be left out of the ecology argument of wind farms/solar heating, etc. Not hard to see why clean, clear springs were held in such reverence by our ancestors.