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When I were young - not so long ago - I lived out in the country. In those days they ploughed manure into the fields each year (i.e. the ground's roughage). They then went over to direct drilling and liquid feed and fertiliser. As a result the ground can now only absorb water very slowly and in heavy rain it just runs off. As a youngster I can only recall one flood after a week of heavy rain. Now it does not seem to require much more than a heavy shower in the area to cause some degree of flooding.
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One has to ring them up and request or demand the service!
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there's our answer then.......i frequently used to ring in about a drain that would block opposite my house, as in a good rain storm, all the debris would float down the road and block the drain. Eventually, after numerous years, they changed the size of the drain and drain cover to a much larger one and it no longer blocks.
Not claiming it was my intervention that did it, but it can't hurt. (There's probably a file marked
'Meldrew' now at the council).
If you get a really good storm, being at the bottom of a slight hill, the water pressure in the drains causes litle 'geysers' to appear in the cover in the middle of the main road...fascinating to watch.
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Left Centerparcs this morning in a downpour. Someone tried to get me to pull off the road to give them room to get their 50ft wide Lexus 4x4 past. I stayed where I was and got a tirade of abuse from behind his windscreen. I got out (he suddenly looked scared) and pointed out to him that the nice flat surface he wanted me to pull over to was in fact a blocked gully full to the brim with water.
V
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With the amount of rain we have had no amount of drain cleaning is going to help,far too much water for most systems to cope with!!
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So what's changed?
We used to get downpours, and used to cope with them far better than we do nowadays.
I'm not denying climate change, but, I was out today, and I saw many drains overflowing that further downhill were not. There's one particular manhole cover that lifts under the slightest wet conditions. I haven't reported it, because it's twenty-odd miles away from where I live.
I believe it's ignorance and apathy.
We had a local problem with surface water drainage, and a neighbour and I lifted manhole covers one very wet day until we found one where the water wasn't backing up. We reported this (forcibly) to the authority. We had the usual discussions about what skills warranted our action, but eventually the blockage was cleared!
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In our part of the world all the roads had ditches at the side. Lots of capacity and easy to boot clear if a blockage occured. Now they have an obsession with tarmacking the road right up to the edge and putting underground culverts with drainage grids. The grids block with debris after the first rain, and a blocked culvert needs the special gulping machine, which of course they don't use anymore.
So the water ends up flowing along the road, which breaks up, needing more roadworks to repair it. Throw in concreting green spaces, building on flood plains, permitting new housing without upgrading the drainage, etc.
Most of the flooding is down to basic council incompetence.
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>>building on flood plains
Still doing so in Kent,i suspect things wont change,drivers still going mad through flooded roads/lanes and wonder why engines pack up,will they ever learn???
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The gunge cleaners may well be owned privately
Ah yes privatisation ! If I remember correctly, isn't this a mechanism wherby we pay a private company (probably owned by one of the councilors cronies), who makes a huge profit to do half the job to a poorer standard than was being done before by public staff ?
But what the heck, an accountant somewhere can show we have theoretically saved some money on paper.
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Sorry Roly I have to correct you there. What the contractor does is subcontract it, creaming off a nice little earner for doing stuff all. And if you complain to the council because it is not being done properly and your council tax is being wasted, they don't take responsibility, you get passed down the chain until you give in.
JH
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"Environment Agency does not have funding or manpower to get out and clean up every blocked culvert or jammed up grating"
Although of course it has to pay vastly more for the cleanup operation afterwards - or does that come out of a different jam-jar?
Oh, thank you, Mrs T...
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We also have ditches which used to have stable edges full of wild flowers. In recent years a team has turned up on a regular basis with a truck towing a small digger and 4 - 5 men, who proceed to 're-instate the verges' (as I was told by the Council). Excellent idea! Dig out the ditch a little and plonk the unstable mass on the verge + edge of road surface. Now the water comes off the fields/woodland/garden into the ditch and the water on the road ..... stays on the road - because there is now a heap of mud between the road and the ditch. Brilliant. Then, best of all, a lorry or tractor comes up the now narrower lane, and goes into the verge - so then we have a pool of water and mud on the road and a blocked ditch. Couldn't devise a better skidding area if you tried, once the water has subsided a little.
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Here in my sunny East Yorkshire village, I have to say the road sink flushers have been doing their job.
Certainly once last year and this year they have been with their magic machine.
Last year was a red cable tie on the grate and this year a blue one to show which sinks had been done.
It didn't stop the road being under five feet of water a couple of hundred yards down the road though - and the houses, well bungalows, to make matters worse. But it did rain long and hard.
Martin
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A few years ago, I used to see those small yellow tankers with "Gully Emptying" signs going around clearing out drains. They were a very common sight. I was only saying to a mate last weekend that I can't remember the last time I saw one.
I don't think the weather patterns have changed, but the resulting road conditions after sustained rainfall, or even a short downpour seem to have got lots worse.
But then news footage of flooded roads and homes is a powerful tool for a government to persuade us that a 10p/litre fuel tax increase is for our own good...
Cheers
DP
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
97 Ford Fiesta 1.4 16v Chicane (for sale)
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>I don't think the weather patterns have changed
No the hotest day ever recorded one year followed by the wetest day ever recorded the next year, is fairly stable I feel.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Records are made to be broken.
2 years isn't enough to draw meaningful conclusions on a 4.6 billion year old planet. Neither is 2000 for that matter.
--
04 Grand Scenic 1.9 dCi Dynamique
00 Mondeo 1.8TD LX
97 Ford Fiesta 1.4 16v Chicane (for sale)
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TVM
With bent facts like that you must be training to be an environmentalist. That was nowhere near the wettest day ever recorded.
Even taking the as-yet unconfirmed 5.6" reading at Pershore College; that's barely half the UK 24hr record of 10.9" set in July 1955.
[Personally; I blame it all on those Pagans... I think they overdid the chanting. Doh!!]
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I have not much interest in the environment, just a mentalist.
I dont doubt that we have been having much more unstable and unpredictable weather. I dont doubt that there is climiat change going on. I dont know however if this part of a weather change that:
a: started several hundred or thousands of years ago,
b: or is the start of another climate change that happens every hundreds or thousands of years.
c or is caused by man / cows / cars, and we will all die in 75 years.
I do know that I feel cheated. For the last three years I have been promised that global warming would provide the UK with a mediteranean climate, and that i could grow lemons and olives in my back garden.
Well? Where is it! I want it now while I can enjoy it, not this flooding monsoon carp.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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You can grow rice and like it.
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I think we skipped the Mediterranean option and went straight for the full Tropical - complete with monsoon-level thunderstorms.
Forget olives - grow mangroves. [It'll slow the floodwaters down a bit...]
Whatever the planet will do - it will do. We should forget trying to "manage" it [as though we could!] and just dig bigger ditches.
Most of the grief of this week has been down to inadequate drainage; no Council wants to pay for new sewers - there are far more votes in new kiddies' playgrounds.
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>>Most of the grief of this week has been down to inadequate drainage
I think thats wrong,the amount of rain that fell was far worse than I can remember seeing at any time before,so I have doubts any amount of drainage would have coped with the rainfall we had.
>>We should forget trying to "manage" it [as though we could!]
I agree,i dont think there is anything we can do,nature controls itself and always has done years before we came along
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>..and that i could grow lemons and olives in my back garden.
We have a lemon tree, an olive tree, half a dozen palms and a cheyenne pepper in the garden - all of them doing fine. In fact the pepper is going barmy with fruit.
Kevin...
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>>not this flooding monsoon carp.
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How about a new approach?
Use the monsoon to fill some big ponds and then grow carp.
A tasty alternative to being washed up?
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