First, a big THANK YOU to everyone who completed a MAIDAFLOODACTION flood survey and to our local politicians, councillors and press; your contributions have made all the difference.
Our meeting with Thames Water at Westminster City Hall in December was very positive and productive. We are very happy that Westminster councillors are committed to resolving the issue and that Thames Water is taking it seriously and has pledged to find a solution. Thames Water readily agreed to accept MFA's flood survey data as proof that there is an issue that must be resolved.
Next steps will include a Thames Water 'walkabout' with two Maida Flood Action campaigners, one covering the Little Venice / Formosa area, and the other covering the Maida Hill / Shirland area. The objective is to show Thames Water just how far and wide the problem is spread, and the variety of properties that were involved, as well as those who were lucky this time, with a near miss, and escaped flooding by millimetres. The Thames Water team is very keen to access damaged properties in order take measurements and photographs to enable the technical guys to better understand the problem.
We will then meet again in May, by which time Thames will have come up with a proposal for resolving the flooding. This is not as simple as one might think; the solutions that might seem obvious to us (e.g. storage tanks, re-route the flow etc.) all need evaluation to ensure they would (a) actually be effective if implemented and (b) are suitable for the geography / geology of the area.
We still need your help in two areas please!
- Could you be available on Friday 5th March for a Thames Water / MFA site visit? They would like to take measurements and photographs. Privacy: Of course, all data remains confidential, will not be passed to 3rd parties unless they are directly involved with resolving the flood issue.
- Could you help us collect more flood surveys? We still need more! Whist Thames is committed to resolving our issue, if another area has a bigger problem, we might lose out in terms of priority when OFWAT approves final proposals. The best way to prevent such an unhappy occurrence is to have as many flood surveys as possible, but getting them is hard work and we need more people to help by knocking on doors, offering help with form filling, and talking to neighbours.
Finally... if you want to learn more about what's been going on with MAIDAFLOODACTION, just Google maidafloodaction and you'll find numerous pages of articles, reports and updates on progress. Enjoy!
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