• Harrow Area Flooding

We wrote to Rachael Shimmin the Bucks Council CEO requesting an investigation into the causes of the flooding, and have received two replies from Rosie Tunnard. The first essentially describes the flooding as a well maintained drainage system simply being overwhelmed by sheer volume of rain and detritus swept along the road.

The second carries some notes from the Flood Management Team, who are putting some work into analysing how the problems occurred.

We are currently looking into the contents of these letters and intend to reply soon. However, there are some possible good points in the letters:

• Clearance of gully systems have been ordered
• Looking into possible solutions to better direct road water into the Warrendene ditch
• Hampden Rd ditch is to be cleared (looking very overgrown)

• Thames Water

Despite expectations to the contrary, TW started overpumping by the Surgery this month. This has provided much relief to those neighbours who were experiencing sewage spillages in their gardens.

We are currently organising a daytime meeting with Mark Dolby, a Snr TW engineer to visit and update us on current activities.

The sewer remains full and becomes threatening when we have heavy rain or when the  overpumping unit stops running for any reason.

A look at the Hughenden Borehole graph shows that the groundwater levels are slowly going down, but have a long way to go before the stream stops running.

• Chiltern Society

Paul was invited to a Chiltern Society Friends event, where representatives of the groups that look after the Chiltern chalkstreams gathered. This was a new event to try and bring each of the groups closer and encourage joint production of plans etc.

Paul will pick up with the Revive the Wye group who look after the Wye but also have the Hughenden Stream as part of their remit.

Paul also to identify any persons or group in our valley wanting to take on a role in this.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

               Sewage overpumping unit installed today by the surgery.

Paul

A DIG meeting was held to discuss the flooding events the Valley had been experiencing in February and March. Attendees were essentially DIG members local to lower Valley Rd affected by the sewage issues. The issues discussed included:

Surface water flooding along Warrendene and into the Harrow and gardens close by

Sewage leakage problems experienced in lower Valley Road and Boss Lane affecting up to 20 houses caused by prolonged rainfall

The meeting spent some considerable time talking about individual experiences, action taken to cope with incidents of flooding and help given by local agencies.

Bucks Council

It was noted that only following the Harrow flooding of 17/18^th did maintenance work on road drains start. This is work that had been requested several times via FixMyStreet by the DIG.This work is not complete yet and is viewed as a contributory factor in worsening the results of the flooding at that time.

It was decided that the DIG should write to the Chief Executive of Bucks Council to express our dissatisfaction with the service provided and to request a detailed investigation be undertaken to determine the cause of the flooding and how it might have been prevented.

Thames Water

Since losing access to Darren Trenchard, our main contact at Thames Water, we had been trying to find someone to replace him, without success. We were finally able to get some up to date intelligence on TW via an introduction thanks to Roger Hewitt. Our findings are as follows:

We were informed that TW have changed dramatically since our flooding 10 years ago, principally:

Centralisation of management and operationsChange in approach to planning. As we have seen with the DWMP although this is now a massive operation although there is precious little documentation relating to Little Marlow other than a page with reference to sewer lining, surface water management and investing in the sewage treatment works. They don’t say what they will do at Little Marlow (I guess it will be mostly increasing storage capacity to reduce releases into the Thames). There is absolutely no reference to Hughenden Valley.Equipment and resources are now centrally located in warehouses rather than, say, at the STW. This suggests our dedicated overpumping units are no longer at Marlow and in any event no one at TW probably has any knowledge of units dedicated for our use. I did receive a mail from Simon Cook (next to Chiltern Car Sales) at the weekend who said a Lanes engineer told him ‘all resources are out in use’ when he asked about the overpumping units.

The relationship has fundamentally changed in recent years with the Environment Agency. The legislation has been vastly tightened up making it far more difficult to gain approval on things like overpumping.

The response from TW during this month was agreed as being poor to useless. In effect, any call outs resulted in TW contractors visiting houses and offering sympathy but little else. There had been no help from requests for local pumping out of inspection pits or to install  overpumping units such as was put in place in 2014. However, towards the end of March, frequent tinkering took place at Spring Rising, where there was considerable flooding from an inspection pit.

Actions agreed:

We would remove all references to overpumping from the DIG website as that is something no longer reserved for us

We would write to the CEO of Thames Water to express our dissatisfaction with the recent help given. We will compare it with the much higher level of help given in 2000 and 2014. Also, to request some proper detail on the Drainage Plans for our area plus to provide us with an engineering contact who could visit us and hear our complaints.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG

Hi All,

               Just letting you know that I have raised a FixMyStreet for us all along this stretch to be offered sandbags to try and contain/direct any sewage leakages.

I have also let David Carroll know about this and asked him to try and help the priority on this.

I’ll let you know what occurs.

Rgds

Paul

Overnight on 17^th/18^th February, prolonged overnight rain resulted in some serious flooding at the Harrow and a number of properties along Valley Road towards the school. The road was so badly flooded that a fire appliance was needed to pump out the Harrow car park and flooded gardens.

The DIG had raised FixMyStreet cases for the road drains at the Harrow (following the October flood) and we are not convinced this work was done before this second bout of flooding.

It is understood that the road drains along that stretch of Valley Road empty directly into the stream culvert that runs from the Harrow to Deeters. The extent of the flooding suggests that there may well have been a blockage in the culvert near the Harrow. On Sunday morning the fire brigade were pumping  large amounts of flood water into the road drains opposite the school turning and this was getting away well.

We have asked David Carroll if this will be investigated. However, it seems quite possible that the fire brigade may well have cleared any blockage themselves.

Sewage System Overloaded

Down the Village Hall end of Valley Road, problems have been experienced with high sewage levels in inspection pits. Properties close to Chiltern Car Sales have placed calls with TW as they are already suffered some spillage. Others further up towards the Village Hall are experiencing full inspection pits along with unusable downstairs toilets etc.

The sewage junction in the field below the pumping station has spilled sewage on a number of occasions recently and the area is fenced off now so TW have clearly been visiting there.

The very high levels of rain made the DIG start thinking about the Thames Water overpumping units which had been used in 2014 to ease the sewage problems. Now, any enquiries about these has been pretty much fruitless.

The Stream

The stream is now running throughout the village and at pace. There have been concerns about the area of the pumping station where the stream, springs and road drain run-off all have to navigate their way round and under the pumping station. Fortunately the water appears to be running easily through into the field (Seven Springs Field?) without any backing up anywhere. Not pretty but it’s working.

Paul Woodford

HVRA DIG