I have been out walking around Worksop. As I had to be elsewhere yesterday (Wednesday), it was my first chance to see what damage had been caused by the exceptional rainfall we had on Tuesday evening.
What was surprising about the flooding on Tuesday evening was that it wasn’t caused by the Ryton bursting it’s banks as most of the recent floods in our town have been (today as I walked past it, it was still very much below its normal level), much of the flooding was in areas that have never flooded in the 30+ years I have lived in Worksop.
It was caused by getting nearly twice the average rainfall for the whole of August in just a few hours. Such cloud bursts always cause flooding, when we get one just after a prolonged dry period leaving what open spaces we have left, too many have been built in or paved over, bone hard and not able to soak up the rain quickly so the flooding is bound to be worse.
Of course, we have the normal deep flood on Kilton Hill under the Railway Bridge we get whenever it rains. The County Council really need to do something urgently about dealing with this as it effectively cuts of parts of Kilton. We also saw flooding on the street near the old bus depot but I can’t remember ever seeing Retford Road, Lowdown, Stanley Street or Sandy Lane flood as they did.
There were however some things that made it worse.
As I walked near the new McDonalds on Retford Road, I saw that a number of the drains were nearly blocked by the rubbish, mostly discarded fast food wrappings. I can’t say for sure that this contributed to flooding in a place not known for it, I am sure that it didn’t help. Also the early fall of leaves from trees (due to the drought) has meant that
What is definitely needed is more street sweeping and I hope that Bassetlaw Council added a condition to the planning permission for all new fast-food takeaways that made them pay for the extra cleaning needed in their area. (It would be better if those who buy food at takeaways didn’t litter so much but that is a much harder battle to wage.)
We also need to street drains cleaned more regularly (this is a Nottinghamshire County Council responsibility), something that seems to have been neglected in recent years. If the drains haven’t been maintained, they would struggle dealing with even a normal rainstorm, let alone the deluge we had this week.
The lessons to learn for both the District & County Councils are that routine work like street & drain may seem an easy target for cutting when budgets ore tight, the results of not doing so can be catastrophic for some people and shouldn’t be skimped on.
Given the rise in extreme weather events such as we have seen this year (Worksop’s Record temperature, driest July on record & the deluge on Tuesday) which Global Warming will only exasperate, we need to make surer we are ready to deal with such events in the future and not wait until afterwards and then start playing pass the blame parcel.
Mantonite - A Worksop Liberal 