Jubilee River

The Jubilee River is a hydraulic channel in southern England. It is 11.6km long and is on average 45m wide. It was constructed in the late 1990s and early 2000s to take overflow from the River Thames and so alleviate flooding to areas in and around the towns of Maidenhead, Windsor, and Eton in the counties of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. It achieves this by taking water from the left (at this point eastern) bank of the Thames upstream of Boulter's Lock near Maidenhead and returning it via the north bank downstream of Eton, Berkshire. Although successful in its stated aims, residents of villages downstream claim it has increased flooding.ConstructionThe Environment Agency commissioned the design and construction of the river which cost £110 million. When it was formed, the channel was the largest man-made river project undertaken in Britain in modern times, and the second largest in Europe. As well as creating the channel and its various flow control mechanisms, the scheme involved constructing many bridges for road, rail and foot traffic. One of these, Dorney Bridge, took the channel through a 19th-century Brunel railway embankment while it continued to carry main line trains between London and Bristol. The Victorian tall embankment had to be frozen; then bored through, creating a large tunnel; and then a concrete culvert already formed to fit was inserted.