Angus Idle forwarded us a mail from Jerry Morley late last week. Jerry had noticed that although the Council’s recent work to clear the ditches had gone well, the culvert opposite the tunnel that comes under the road from Buildbase was effectively blocked.

Following receipt of Jerry’s mail, a couple of us went down to the pumping station suitably armed with rakes, forks etc. After a bit of scraping around, we were able to see what Jerry was referring to, as you can see from the photo attached – we hadn’t even appreciated there was a culvert hidden under the trees. The culvert is directly opposite the exit of the tunnel that comes under the road from Buildbase, and in fact the photo shown was taken by me from inside the tunnel.

If you look carefully at the picture you can see that there is a pipe there going into the pumping station grounds, it is somewhat obscured by the fence. The trees sit directly over the pipe but the roots etc don’t appear to interfere with the pipe or prevent water to flow into it, but it was not easy to check. We scratched away the weeds that were in front of this pipe, so the area immediately in front of it is clear.

We recall from when the stream was last flowing in earnest that much of the water turns left when emerging from under the road and runs left along the front of the pumping station before then doing a right turn into the field. There are weeds along this stretch and now some rubble left by Affinity’s recent work at the corner of the site  – see photo. 

It may be worth cutting the fence from around the entrance to the pipe but we would I guess need to get Affinity Water to do that. Certainly the weeds might best be cut. Meanwhile, any water will flow without a problem, all we need is some rain.

We have mailed Alex Back of Bucks CC to update him and to ask if he considers there to be an issue here that needs to be addressed by Bucks CC and/or Affinity.