Thames Water bosses got a real damp squib in response to their first public attempt to win support for a new £1bn reservoir on farmland near Abingdon.

Hours of heavy rain, which brought town centre traffic to a standstill, meant only a trickle of visitors turned up to an exhibition in Abingdon's Abbey Hall yesterday morning.

Press officers said only 10 people wandered in to inspect documents and plans during the first two hours of the public consultation event.

Thames Water, the most leak-prone supplier in England, was meeting the public and its detractors for the first time over the proposed building of the country's largest and fully embanked reservoir for the past 25 years, measuring four square miles.

The project will tower above the otherwise flat farmland west of the villages of Drayton and Steventon, between the A34 and the A338 to Wantage and Grove.

The deadline for completion of the massive project - three times the size of Farmoor reservoir near Cumnor, and with just under half the volume of Lake Windermere - is scheduled for about 2018.

Dave Cook, the company's water resources manager, said the stage one plans and proposals currently on view were a far cry from those originally aired some 16 years ago.

He said: "We have done a lot of work on water efficiency and water leakage and have now taken this into account, but we believe we want a major new resource.

"We've got at least one million people coming into the South East and so we need that much more water to cope with this major demand."

Brian Eastoe, a 72-year-old retired field property manager with an oil company, was one of the first through the door.

He said: "This consultation is the first time anyone has seen the alternative sites to the one at Steventon.

"It's now a private company with shareholders asking for huge profits, and they're planning to buy up properties at a 'blighted' value."

Mr Eastoe, who lives at Sutton Wick, between Abingdon and Drayton, said: "My advice to people is to go and see a solicitor and argue the case for the 'Stokes Principle' which means you are entitled to the residual value of the land - in other words, it should be valued as part of the site of a multi-million pound reservoir and not as blighted land.

"This is going to disrupt the whole area, and the water will mainly go to Swindon.

"I feel there should be a national grid for water, just as there is for electricity."

John Orchard, from North Abingdon, is footpath secretary of the local Ramblers Associations.

He said: "My contention is that they will wipe out six footpaths which lie across the reservoir site.

"I need to know what recourse they will bring in to rectify this.

"I'm sorry for people in the villages who will just see this huge structure, and for the effect it will have on traffic on the A34, which is already horrendous."