By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
Severn Trent chiefs couldn’t say what plans they have to upgrade sewer systems in Tewkesbury amid serious flooding concerns as thousands of homes “could be built on floodplains”.
A series of connected garden communities are being planned near Tewkesbury to help meet the local demand for housing.
But serious concerns were raised at a Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) meeting last week that a lot of the 10,000 new homes will be built on floodplains.
Water firm bosses were quizzed at Shire Hall’s environment scrutiny committee meeting over what actions were being taken to reduce instances of sewage being dumped in water courses.
And Councillor Vernon Smith (C, Tewkesbury East), a civil engineer, raised concerns about the growth of housing in the Tewkesbury area.
He asked Severn Trent bosses what was being done to upgrade the combined sewage systems in the market town area.
In a combined sewer system, wastewater and stormwater flow through the same pipes.
Cllr Smith stressed the need for them to be replaced in Tewkesbury and said residents in Mitton have had “flooding coming up through their toilets”.
“Every time you have a flood in Tewkesbury, Severn Trent and GCC have had to deal with loads of time,” he said.
“I’ll give you a prime example, Ashchurch Road, you flood all the houses because it is a combined system.
“The combined systems were phased out in 1975. You should have had a plan by now from 2007 to 2024, of how to remove all those combined systems.
“My question is, for the £14 billion, how much of that are you using in the Tewkesbury area?”.
Andrew Fairburn, Severn Trent’s head of government relations, said he would love to replace all combined sewers but it would cost around £300 billion nationwide.
“We cannot spend £300 billion,” he said.
“If that was considered a good use of public money, we, of course, would do that. That is pretty big.”
Cllr Smith interjected to say he wanted to know what was specifically being done in Tewkesbury as he was not aware of any upgrades.
Mr Fairburn said he did not know what was being invested in Tewkesbury but agreed that the town “absolutely does flood a lot”.
He said in Gloucestershire the company is investing £330 million on upgrading the sewer network over the next five years. “I don’t know the specifics for Tewkesbury,” he said.
“The biggest single corporate memory we have got as a company would be when the Mythe waterworks flooded in 2007.
“We are the victims of flooding. We came within a few hours of losing clean water.
“That illustrates why we have to invest in other areas. It’s not just storm overflows.
“[Such as] protecting Mythe treatment works, which we’ve now done through heavy investment.”
Cllr Smith also asked Severn Trent about their mapping system and whether they still used Infoworks for pluvial flood mapping – the maps which shows where rain water goes.
He said the last time the Environment Agency issued a combined flood map showing pluvial and fluvial data was in the 1990s.
Cllr Smith said a real map of water displacement is shown when the fluvial Environment Agency map and Severn Trent’s pluvial map are combined.
“Why isn’t it used since? It’s because it shows a lot of the developments that are currently trying to be built are in the floodplain,” he said.
“So you halve it and completely ignore it.”
Mr Fairburn did not know the answer regarding the mapping system they use.
“I haven’t got a clue, but I can try and find out for you,” he said.
Cllr Smith said it was really disappointing that a senior Severn Trent manager did not know their infoworks pluvial flooding mapping system.
“I’m absolutely amazed,” he said.
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Original post on the Gloucestershire News Centre website
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