On the 1st of October there was a major thunderstorm accompanied by very heavy rain in the Valley. It was reported that this may have been the heaviest rain in many years and resulted in Valley Road being awash and householders again having water pouring down their drives and into the garage. Amazingly, the very heaviest rain only lasted twenty minutes,  so we can be thankful it wasn’t for any longer.

As you can see from the pictures below, in addition to the large amount of water on the pavement on the east side of Valley Road, the ditch on the west side struggled to get the water away. 

BCC have been made aware of the problems faced that day and will be visiting to discuss with affected householders.

Last year Bucks CC issued its Land Drainage Enforcement Policy. This essentially lays out how the Council will manage and control water courses in its area. Most of these watercourses (which include rivers, streams and our own Hughenden Valley winterbourne stream) run through properties owned by farms, businesses and households).

Having a watercourse on your property confers rights and responsibilities, which are termed Riparian, meaning relating to the banks of a river or stream. Those of us with the stream in our gardens in the Valley will be aware that for most years it is a depression or ditch in the garden with no water in it, and there is little requirement to pay heed to it other than perhaps cutting grass or weeding it. However, it is important that riparian rights and responsibilities are understood, particularly by affected householders, to ensure proper actions are taken to manage flood risk. 

Reproduced here is a section of the Guidance for Riparian Owners, which is part of the Land Drainage Enforcement Policy. The full document can be accessed via the Documents page on the HVDIG web site at:  http://www.hvdig.org.

Riparian Owners’ Rights

1. If your land boundary is adjacent to a watercourse it is assumed that you own the land up to the centre of the watercourse, unless stated otherwise in your property
deeds.

2. If a watercourse runs through or underneath (through a culvert or pipe) land that you own. It is assumed that you own this stretch of watercourse .

3. You have the right to protect your property from flooding, and your land from erosion. However, you must get any plans approved by the relevant authority prior to starting work (see the section on land drainage consent).

Riparian Owners’ Responsibilities

1.  You must let water flow through your land without any obstruction, pollution or diversion which affects the rights of others.

2. You must accept flood flows through your land, even if these are caused by insufficient capacity downstream .

3. You must keep the watercourse banks clear of anything that could cause an obstruction and increase flood risk, either on your land or downstream. This includes any litter or loose vegetation, even if they did not come from your land.

4. It is your responsibility to maintain the bed and banks of the watercourse and the trees and shrubs growing on the banks.5. You must keep structures, such as culverts, trash screens, weirs and mill gates, clear of debris.

The heavy rain this week has yet again caused localised flooding (especially Park Parade), but Valley Road has coped well with it so far. What does tend to happen with these rains is the large amounts of silt that gets swept along and left either on the road margins or in the road drains. Once the road drains fill up, keeping the road free of water becomes increasingly difficult.

This week Debs Lemon reported a number of blocked road drains near the bottom of Coombe Lane to Bucks County Council via the ‘Fix My Street’ website. 

Unfortunately, Debs received a reply saying that no work was necessary. To emphasise the  point, Debs sent a number of photos which clearly show that there is indeed a problem – see below. Let’s hope for a better reply from the Council this time.

If you haven’t used the ‘Fix My Street’ website before, see the HVDIG Advice page.

AGM
The AGM was held on Monday 17th June. The minutes of the meeting and financial report are on the Documents page.

Document Changes

Several changes have just been made to the Documents page that are worth taking note of:

1. The Thames Water Drainage strategy documents are now links to a third party source rather than direct downloads from the DIG website. This was done as a result of shortage of space on our site. It is essentially transparent to the user.

2. The link to the document “Bucks CC Riparian Duties of the Hughenden Stream” has changed and the Documents page has been updated so that this document is still fully available. The link has also been updated further back in the blog.

3. A new document “Bucks CC Culvert Policy” has been added. 

Rain in the Valley

It’s been a fairly wet few weeks! Some of the rain has been fairly heavy and on 9th August, it was especially so. At Park Parade, Hazlemere  there was significant flooding, which included cars being stranded and the fire brigade having to pump out the road. We in the Valley were more fortunate – the really heavy rain did not seem to last more than perhaps 30 minutes here. Valley Road became awash, but not badly so, and it is fair to say that the drainage coped well and excess water quickly dispersed once the rain eased a mite. I am not aware of any problems further up the village. 

As so often happens, the ditch down to the pumping station in Valley Road carried along a load of detritus and deposited it at the entrance to the culvert. We will alert Transport for Bucks for it to be cleared.

Well, it has been a fairly uneventful winter and spring with little significant rain to test last years road drainage improvements and the sewage system. As a result, there has been little to say on the blog page, hence the lack of content – a good thing I would guess.

The Valley appears to have got off lightly with the poor weather of the last week. While some areas have suffered badly with very heavy rain and flooding, we have not seen the massive downpours and the village has not seen any flooding, unless you know different. Phew.

The AGM has been confirmed for Monday 17th June at 7.30pm in case you are interested or haven’t received the invite. It’s being held at Paul & Carolyn Woodford’s, Elwood, Valley Road. Opposite the village hall on Valley Road and a few steps along towards the Surgery.

A new document has been added to the Documents page. It’s the latest update from Thames Water to the Little Marlow Drainage Strategy. It summarises activities undertaken since the last update in 2018 together with ongoing monitoring plans, so worth a look. 

The DIG had raised a concern with Thames Water that no mention was made in this document of the temporary mobile treatment units held at Little Marlow in case of further sewage flooding in the Valley. However, we are assured that this document is in addition to the original strategy document, and is not intended to replace it. In addition TW have confirmed that the 2 treatment units remain at the Little Marlow deport ready for deployment as needed. 

Following the road drainage works carried out in the summer, there have been two instances of further work in recent weeks. I am sure everyone will have seen the road works which so disrupted the traffic in Valley Road in the village hall area.

The first lot of work was the finalisation of the drainage improvements and involved raising of the setts to a number of drives affected by excess water on the road during heavy rain. 

The second lot of work we really don’t know that much about, but think it was to do with the water supply and involved Affinity Water contractors. We know that this area was dug up earlier this year because a leak in the mains supply had been detected. We are not sure that the original leak was repaired at the time. This time however, a considerably larger area of the grass verge and pavement was dug up and now we believe the leak is repaired. This caused a lot of disruption considering the digging was not actually on the road.   

To avoid conflict with the World Cup semi-final, please note that the start time of the AGM has been brought forward to 6pm. 

Following the release of the Thames Water Drainage Strategy document for Hughenden Valley and Little Marlow last year, TW have provided us with an update on this, and which can be found on the Documents page on this website.

The report details work carried out over the last year relating to various type of data gathering and surveys, to help future modelling and better enabling the early identification of issues requiring resolution.   

The works along Valley Road near the bottom of Coombe Lane to improve the road surface water drainage are now complete. We had hoped that the lips to drives affected by the surface water would be raised, but this has not happened so far.

Jonathan Roberts of TFB provided us with a plan of the drain, pipe and chamber work undertaken, which is on the Documents web page. Jonathan also provided an update on the work:

“As you will see we have effectively provided at least a 50% increase in capacity for the existing drainage system within the verge areas. We believe this is essential to remove the surface water as quickly as possible from the areas of carriageway and in particular at the junction of Coombe Lane and Valley Road.

At this junction all flows from these roads are currently channelled into an existing 225mm pipe which has now been doubled to provide the additional capacity required to quickly remove these flows to the area of the ditch. Clearly the existing single 225m carrier pipe with ‘blind’ gully connections in this area was inadequate with the corresponding flows remaining on the carriageway surface.

This arrangement should also assist in releasing the flows within the existing network approaching the junction with Combe Lane from Valley Road and reduce the amount of surface water retained on the carriageway surface.”

Bucks CC have provided us with a link to their Land Drainage Enforcement Policy document. This covers the Council’s responsibilities and powers for the management of watercourses in Bucks. 

In our particular case, HVDIG have been involved with Bucks CC regarding the Hughenden stream, especially where the council is both owner of a section and also the policy enforcer. HVDIG would recommend that residents or businesses in Hughenden Valley who have the Hughenden Stream running through their property should make themselves familiar with this document as it has important implications for them.

A link to the document is on the Documents page.