Local people have been very generous to Didcot Power Station owners, RWE npower, in allowing it to turn our environment into an ash dump. Perhaps we should consider how generous npower plans to be in return.

Its managers kindly promise us restoration of the area. I have difficulty with the idea of replacing a large, pure water lake with a polluted pond in the middle of an ash pit and calling it restoration'.

Damage limitation' perhaps, if you want to be polite, but I would prefer a good old-fashioned term like pulling the wool over people's eyes'.

We now have lovely open views across the lakes. Npower will give us massive bunds, up to 15 feet high, that will surround Thrupp Lake, block the views and shade out the sunlight for much of the day. These two lakes are an oasis of peace in the middle of a very damaged area.

Npower will replace this peace by massive engineering works, lorries crossing the cycle track and lots of noise. The water in the unfilled lakes is very pure and clean.

Npower will turn the larger into an ash pit containing unpleasant pollutants like arsenic, chromium and vanadium and damaging the smaller in the process.

Effluent from the ash is discharged into the Thames via a pool in Pumney Brook.Once an important fish spawning ground, this pool is now murky and virtually devoid of life.

Npower will remove 29 acres from the local flood plain to add to the 60 acres removed by filling lakes previously.

Serious flooding in Radley in January 2003 followed the filling of two lakes in 2002 and unstable weather conditions threaten as a result of global warming.

Npower's gift could create serious problems for the future, not the actions of the good neighbour' it likes to be seen as.

MARJORIE WHITE Cherwell Close, Abingdon