Some of the residents of Victoria Road and London Road in Walton le Dale, near Preston, had a horrible start to the New Year as their homes were flooded during a long and heavy rainstorm. What is particularly awful for these people is that the Environment Agency has spent many millions of pounds building flood defences around their homes over many years, and the project to extend the flood defences is underway right now.
But even though the river level rose up to a very high level, and was just beneath the top of the flood wall, the river did not overtop the wall and the flooding wasn’t caused by a failure of the flood defences. This flooding was caused by stormwater that couldn’t get into the river, and so ‘boiled-up’ in the street, entering homes and properties, even after the rain had stopped. So how can we justify huge investment in flood defences if we don’t invest at the same time in the surface water drainage infrastructure. Once the river level is above the street level, even if it is contained behind the flood wall, the water within the drainage system backs up and has nowhere to go.
It was heartbreaking to see the dirty water seeping up and into people’s cellars and front rooms without anyway to stop it.
It is time that we took stormwater management seriously in England, and had a centralised fund specifically to deal with its management. In other countries, such a fund is created by charging every home and business a Stormwater Utility Levy which then pays for the necessary investment in the infrastructure. Do you think we should have a Stormwater Utility Levy in the UK?
