Wookey Hole Caves the water emerging from the underground caverns at Wookey Hole. The lead in the water is believed to have affected the quality of the paper produced. The designation of the water catchment area for Wookey Hole, covering a large area of the Mendip Hills as far away as Priddy Pools as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) during the 1970s and 1980s was controversial because of conflicts of interest between land owners, recreational cavers and cave scientists. Initially proposals were put forward by the Council of Southern Caving Clubs which is part of the British Caving Association was that
Wookey Hole Caves as an inlier at the centre. Wookey Hole is a solutional cave mainly formed in the limestone by chemical weathering whereby naturally acidic groundwater dissolves the carbonate rocks, but it is unique in that the first part of the cave is formed in Triassic Dolomitic Conglomerate, a well-cemented fossil limestone scree representing the infill of a Triassic valley. The cave was formed under phreatic conditions i.e. below the local water table, but lowering base levels to which the subterranean drainage was flowing resulted in some passages being abandoned by the river, and there is evidence of a number of abandoned