Kielder Water - Northumbria

Kielder Water is a large man-made reservoir, the largest artificial lake in the United Kingdom by capacity of water and is surrounded by Kielder Forest, the biggest man-made woodland in Europe. The scheme was planned in the late 1960s to satisfy an expected rise in demand for water to support a booming UK industrial economy. But the decline of traditional heavy industry, together with more water-efficient industrial processes and better control of water supply leakage, served to undermine the original justification for the reservoir and many came to criticise the government-funded project as a white elephant. Kielder Water is owned by Northumbrian Water, and holds 200 billion litres (44 billion gallons, or 0.2 cubic km), making it the largest artificial reservoir in the UK by capacity (Rutland Water is the largest by surface area). It has a 27.5-mile (44.3 km) shoreline, and is 39.7 km (24.6 miles) from the sea