Friday 18 September 2009

Hammersmith flooding: it's your problem

sewageTonights' meeting was presented by H&F Council as a have-a-go-at-Thames-Water meeting. Alas for them I fear their favourite scapegoat was transformed into a saint george figure this evening while they have become the dragon.

In front of a packed residents meeting in Hammersmith Town Hall Thames Water's two top men genuinely seemed to impress with their 9 year plan for sorting out flooding in W12 and W6. The problem is thus - sewers built in the 1850s cannot handle poo plus rain (London is the only place the two are collected in the same pipes) in todays' quantities. So when we have heavy rain it's either got to go in the Thames or your house if you live in certain areas. Brutally simple.

Cllr Nick Botterill, Cabinet Member for the Environment argued at the outset that "we are on top of the problem" - this caused laughter. He bravely persevered and blamed Thames Water - at which point he was challenged for being "underhand" by the chair of Boswell Street Residents Association while another resident, who was looking at the H&F website on his palm pilot noted that the title said "flooding - its your responsibility". A good example of H&Fs' approach to residents he said. You're on your own.

Thames Water have produced a 'heat map' showing the areas most at risk from flooding in west London. H&F was a sea of red (high risk) up until the Goldhawk Road. In the next 5 years they'll be spending over £400 million trying to protect H&F from more floods.

H&F has more basement flat dwellers than anywhere else in London - 37,000 of us live in them. 54% of which are connected physically to the main trunk sewers that take waste from as far afield as Brent and Camden right through H&F and down into Bazalgette's sewage system from the 1800s. They are all at risk of flooding with foul water. But the targets of people's ire was the council this evening. It was notable that the leader of the opposition became a de-facto chair at the end of the meeting pressing the council to act on collecting more data.

Not a successful evening for Council Leader Stephen Greenhalgh by any stretch of the imagination. But I would say a pretty good one for Thames Water.

16 comments:

  1. [...] fact at this meeting last week it did seem a bit bizarre that we were hearing about how Thames Water were trying [...]

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  2. [...] 25, 2009 by chrisunderwood It’s been quite an intense two weeks on this blog with two high profile meetings at the Town Hall among other things. So how about this to start the week-end – a [...]

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  3. [...] issues including the chopping down of trees (the council want to the Mayor doesnt want them to) the Thames Tideway Tunnel (H&F dont want what they cal the “super sewer” the Mayor does) and now the [...]

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  4. [...] soaked walking up Uxbridge Road today I wondered about whether or not this was going to mean yet more sewage pouring into people’s homes in Hammersmith, the key driver for what looks like the inevitable [...]

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  5. [...] As you know if you were in the Bush it rained hard this week, and as Thames Water told us at this meeting, this generally means that raw sewage from as far afield as Camden and Brent flows through [...]

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  6. [...] will be going and expecting to hear questions about the ’super sewer’, the recent decision on the Goldhawk Block and the continued stain on W12 left by our murderous [...]

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  7. [...] I reported from this meeting about the chronic flooding problems suffered by our Borough at the moment this was really a [...]

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  8. [...] relevant and Shaun talked about “massive cost and loss of green space”, referring to this meeting and this local [...]

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  9. [...] Mayor against their campaign to stop the tunnel is evidence enough of that. Their performance at this meeting was probably in hindsight their last stand, and Shaun Bailey’s performance on telly last [...]

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  10. [...] environment and our taxes if it goes ahead. For a very long time now Thames Water has been on the receiving end of an awful lot of vitriol from our Council as the chief villains, but this senior source has clearly decided that enough is [...]

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  11. [...] now that their decision has been placed in deep freeze by the Government) and their handling of the flooding issues that affect W12. Now Shaun appears to have lost the support of the residents of Aschurch. Their [...]

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  12. [...] being flooded with foul water and is therefore an issue that sparks strong local emotions, as in this meeting at the Town Hall [...]

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  13. [...] it which many of us, including me, supported. But as Thames Water made clear on this blog and at this meeting, many of the facts that our Council have been reporting are in fact false. And they know [...]

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  14. [...] Filmed in his front room Rollo mentions not one thing about the local area, doesn’t even mention Shepherd’s Bush at all, and instead says that “one more Labour, Tory or LibDem MP won’t make a difference..but a Green MP will.” He has not one thing to say about the major local issues of housing, the economy, transport or even the big local environmental issue of the Thames Tideway Tunnel – either the impact on one of our local green spaces or the ongoing problem of sewer flooding. [...]

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  15. [...] lots of rain plus poo – out it goes into the Thames – or in the worst case scenarios into people’s houses in Hammersmith [...]

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  16. [...] always remember this meeting which the Council tried to present as a “let’s get Thames Water” opportunity for [...]

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