Cirencester residents hit out over flood response (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)
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Cirencester residents hit at Thames Water, the Environment Agency and Cotswold District Council out over flood response
8:00am Thursday 21st March 2013 in News By Ian Craig
ANGRY residents packed Cotswold District Council’s Cirencester headquarters last Thursday to quiz the authority and other agencies on what is being done following last winter’s flooding.
At the meeting Hereward Road resident Dorothy Hoyle – whose house was flooded in both November and December – spoke of the misery her and her neighbours had faced over Christmas and New Year.
"We spent 10 days filling up petrol pumps every two hours," she said.
"We don’t want to claim on our insurance because then we probably wont be able to afford it next year."
Cirencester resident James Bell said he felt Thames Water had "let the people of Cirencester down".
"Unfortunately, they have a monopoly and we can't change suppliers," he said.
Andrew Crawford from Thames Water apologised for any problems residents had faced and explained the town’s sewers were built to deal with water from homes and could not cope with excess water and sewage from floods.
"I won’t sit here and tell people we responded very well because we didn’t," he said.
Ian Tomes from the Environment Agency said flood mitigation projects had been identified but were deemed not to be cost-effective.
CDC’s head of public protection Kate Bishop said the council was currently reviewing how the floods were responded to so quicker action could be taken in the future.
Geoff66 says...
12:48pm Thu 21 Mar 13
Surely measures such as:
- improving river + stream flows
- removing weeds, overhanging bushes and trees and river weed
- de-silting our river + stream beds
- mapping river flows and peak flows
- and ensuring regular drain clearing and man hole emptying
.....would all help!!!
Whilst "costly flood mitigation projects have been considered and have been deemed to be not cost effective".. there are things which could be done to help resolve some of these issues and it is unclear why CDC, the Town Council and Thames Water and the Environment Agency will not work hand in hand to address some of these problems.
Look at the flooding at the Memorial Gardens.... why not de-silt and clear out the river bed and sort out the river junction adjacent Stratton Road garage. It doesn't require rocket science to see that a lack of action to sort out this river junction, and to redirect more of the flow alongside the Out Door pool, would have helped alleviate some of the flooding problems.
Come on lets bang some heads together and get some ideas and projects on the table