EILEEN PLACE FLOOD PREVENTION

These pages are written and maintained by 'Flood Prevention in Eileen Place'.

Our Group ‘Flood Prevention in Eileen Place’ was founded to address the Environment Agency’s Flood Map published last year. I followed up the map on their web site, because we have had ‘near flooding’ on several occasions in recent years. I was astounded to find that Eileen Place was in an area classed as at “Significant Risk” of flooding, despite the fact that it has not actually been noticeably flooded since it was built in 1910.

There are however some houses, down the bottom end, that do have water penetration problems due to a dip in the road. What makes our problem of particular concern is the old Bridge that used to serve as access to Eileen Park, now the Stelco Hardy Factory site.

When the river water rises and reaches the underside of this bridge, it is effectively dammed, from which point it rises disproportionately fast and can overtop the road, which has required sandbags to divert the flow back into the river below the Bridge. If we should ever have a ‘Boscastle flood’ this could be the basis for a disaster.

Together with Alan Richards I sounded out some neighbours who also were concerned and we decided to do something about it. The main reasons for this are:- Nobody wants to be flooded; We are concerned that the Insurance Companies will use the MAP as an excuse to put up or refuse Insurance, we already have one instance of this in the road!

If our insurances rise, or worse are refused, we will not be able to sell our houses and as we are at the bottom of the housing market already this would be crippling to all of us. If preventative measures can be shown to have been carried out, the Flood Map can be amended and the risk eliminated or reduced to acceptable levels. We set up the group, produced a short News sheet to inform everyone of this problem and collected a petition.

Currently we are in an amicable exchange with the Environment Agency and RCT Environmental Services who have admitted there is a problem, not just with the Bridge, but with a build up of river debris below the bridge, Which they agree will have to be removed.

Environmental Services have confirmed that the bridge belongs to the Council (RCT), but have not yet made any decisions on how to tackle the problem. The ‘neighbours’ want the bridge removing, it is now redundant – as the factory has closed. It is an eyesore. And it could cause a disastrous flood.

We want the wall adjacent to the bridge to be extended across the road, to form both protection from overwash of flood water, (due to the speed of the high water washing over the adjacent bend) and to stop vehicles being driven deliberately or accidentally into the river which would be dangerous and could cause a restriction to the flow lower down.

The embankment on the bend is of concrete but has been heavily undercut by the water flow, this would cause great damage should it collapse, bringing down the protecting wall built on top. The river should be regularly ‘dredged’ by the Environment agency, we have determined that years ago this was a regular event, but has not happened for some years.

Just to cheer everyone up, we are also proposing the construction of a small footbridge across the river at the southern end of Eileen Place to enable all walkers from Tynewydd access to the old railway line walk and the mountainside.

To end DO NOT BE COMPLACENT look at www.environment-agency.gov.uk and follow the links to FLOOD MAP. There are MANY other areas that are in danger and perhaps could benefit from taking some action to avoid the inevitable, the more of us that request action the more that will be done to prevent flooding and consequent Insurance hypes.

M.I.Middlehurst and Alan Richards
For the neighbours of Eileen Place.