after the small River Swincombe that flows through Foxtor Mires, the proposed site of the reservoir. The proposal was eventually rejected in December 1970 at the Bill's committee stage, and a reservoir known as Roadford Lake was built west of the moor near the village of Broadwoodwidger instead. However, the other reservoir at Meldon on the north west edge of the moor was passed, despite claims that the water would be poisoned by arsenic and lead because of the presence of three disused metalliferous mines and their spoil heaps in the area to be flooded. The dam was built in 1972, and in that year Sayer wrote a 62-page booklet entitled The Meldon Story that was published by the DPA. After expounding at length all the arguments made against building a dam at Meldon and in favour of an alternative site at Gorhuish, and the responses from the establishment, it ended with this statement: China clay workings Following these efforts, she concentrated on the two companies involved in the extraction of china clay in the south west of the moor. They had permission dating from 1951 to expand their pits and tips. Shaugh Moor is an adjacent area that is rich in ancient monuments and it was there that the companies planned to tip the vast quantities of spoil that is generated from clay extraction. At the time the area became known as "Area Y", from an explanatory diagram that Sayer had drawn. The activism culminated in an adjournment debate in the House of Commons in which Janet Fookes, a Plymouth MP, argued against irreparably damaging the ancient landscape. In June 1978, the two companies agreed to share their waste tips, as Sayer had recommended, saving Shaugh Moor. Okehampton bypass In the early 1980s there were plans to create a bypass for the A30 road around the town of Okehampton on the northern edge of Dartmoor. Two alternative routes were proposed: a northern one through agricultural land, or a southern one which would encroach on the National Park. After a public enquiry was held in 1980 arguments continued for over five years with Sayer vigorously opposing the route through the moor. The matter was finally settled when the southern route was approved in December 1985 by the House of Lords. After the decision had been made, Sayer wrote a letter to Peter Bottomley, the then Minister of Transport that included