Hello everybody,
Many thanks to folk who have contacted us via email with questions and personal updates. It is good to hear when somebody gets to move back into their home after enduring months of temporary accommodation and builders! So, where are we now...?
During March, engineers from Thames Water and representatives from MaidaFloodAction (MFA) met up and compared notes on the area affected by the 'Maida' flooding. Thames produced a comprehensive map of the area and noted new data provided by MFA on it, prior to visiting a number of homes and businesses from Little Venice in the east to Fernhead Rd in the west.
The engineers were able to see the breadth (and in some cases, quite literally the depth) of the problem and were shown properties which, although they've escaped flooding so far, came within a few millimetres of the disaster the rest of us have suffered. This information is now being incorporated into the data required by Thames Water engineers to build computer models of the problem in order to design a suitable solution for it.
In May, Thames Water will meet again with Westminster Council and MaidaFloodAction to present its findings and recommendations for a solution.
Meanwhile a number of residents are confused by letters from Thames Water saying there are no plans to rectify the situation, which obviously seems like a complete contradiction. We have already raised the issue of inconsistent communications with Thames Water and they do acknowledge the problem and have pledged to resolve it, but I guess Rome wasn't built in a day... Letters MFA has seen so far refer to Thames' decision not to install individual non-return valves per household; they do not mean that Thames has stopped researching a more 'global' solution - which will also be a more effective one.
Finally (and apologies for the repetition!) the importance of the flood survey data cannot be over-emphasised, so, thank you if you've done it already, but if you haven't completed a MaidaFloodAction survey, please do so NOW! It's on the right hand side of the blog...
Q: Why do you need more surveys completed now that Thames has accepted MFA's data??
A: Because (1)Thames must ensure the solution they will propose covers the entire area affected and (2) once Thames proposes a solution, it has to be approved by OFWAT, and to do that it is essential to PROOVE how widespread the problem is... and that's what the surveys help to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment