What have Farnley Reservoir, Foreign Affairs and Whitby got in common? This week, as a campaigning local M.P. I persuaded the heads of Yorkshire Water (or Kelda as we should now known it) to come with me to inspect Farnley Reservoir down on the ring road in Wortley, West Leeds.

I've visited the reservoir many times. It's a good walk round. A few years ago Yorkshire Water proposed draining, dredging and improving it. They put up a display in the Mainline Club for our comments and suggestions in the local community. Out of that presentation came "The Friends of Farnley Reservoir." The membership includes some eminent bird watchers.

It's a treat to go to the reservoir with them as they point out to the non-bird expert like me the range and number of birds that live there or visit. It really is a bird sanctuary, including quite a few rare species of visitors. The plan we inspected in the Mainline Club fell foul of high-level changes in Yorkshire Water so not much came of it.

During the Easter break I went to Whitby to declare open a new high technology waste water plant for the area. It's a modern sewage plant. The Victorians believed that pumping sewage out into the sea would get rid of the problem. For most of the twentieth century the improvement was to pipe it further out into the fast flowing tides in the hope that it would not return to pollute the beaches. We now know that all waste needs to be treated and cleaned before it reaches the sea. The new Whitby plant should clean up the North Sea and move the Yorkshire beaches up to top quality.

When asked why didn't the British Government's Foreign Minister have more glamorous things to do than opening sewage plants in Whitby, I did suggest that future tensions, conflicts and even wars in the world as we are already seeing will be over energy supplies and clean and safe water. Water and energy provision remain basic international challenges.

In the meantime, it was helpful to get the top directors of Yorkshire Water to come to Farnley Reservoir with me and to see it for themselves. That way it will not just be one small reservoir among hundreds but recognised as a good local amenity that has real potential for being turned into a top rank environmental protection site. With a bit of good will and investment to protect and enhance the bird life Yorkshire Water could contribute to improving our urban environment in Leeds West.

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