Monday 7 April 2008

Town Council blamed for wall delay.















Three months to the day after I wrote to the Town Council to say that the Environment Agency would not accept their proposal to culvert Kyre Brook, it was finally confirmed at tonight's meeting that the idea would now be dropped.

The WCC Engineer who addressed tonight's meeting claimed that had it not been for the insistence by the Town Council that they pursue this idea, the replacement wall would now be in place.

WCCs remit is to build a wall to support the highway, and flood defences are the responsibility of the Environment Agency. WCC have therefore not undertaken any flood modelling or flow rate monitorin, as they do not require this data to replace the wall. The Environment Agency have recommended that WCC rebuild the wall to a height slightly higher than last years maximum flood level, but no thought seems to have been given to where the water will go, or to the fact that the new wall will join a lower wall, thereby cancelling out any flood defence benefits.

WCC have just appointed new contractors for all engineering work and will now be submitting the plans to these contractors for comments and estimates. It is unlikely that the work will now commence before July.

Councillors at tonight's meeting expressed surprise that as they have do not have sufficient technical qualifications or knowledge to know if the proposed scheme is technically correct, that WCC were waiting for them to sign off the project.

Ludlow Journal

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