The "contaminated" flood water causing problems in Potter Heigham
Potter Heigham homes flooded by ‘dirty’ water
Sunday, March 10, 2013
5:59 PM
Families in Potter Heigham said they have had to deal with a murky mix of rainwater and sewage seeping into their gardens this weekend after a pumping station became overloaded.
Residents in Meadow Court said they were flooded by the “dirty” water yesterday (Saturday) and it has now crept over gardens, driveways and into garden sheds.
Lynn Barrow, who sent in these pictures, said she returned from a family outing to Alton Towers last night to find their driveway submerged.
She said: “We hired a mini bus and we had to get out of the back of the mini bus because the water was that far up the drive. We woke up this morning and the court yard (outside the homes) was completely flooded.”
She rang Anglian Water several times - as neighbours had reported toilets struggling to flush and bath water failing to drain away - and an engineer was sent out at lunchtime.
Mrs Barrow, 42, said he confirmed the water had been “contaminated” but she was “annoyed” that residents had to wait so long for the problem to be sorted.
A tanker is due to visit the homes at 6.30pm to relieve the pumping station.
An Anglia Water spokesman said an alarm had gone off at the pumping station because of the sheer volume of water it was having to deal with.
They added: “The pump has been running 24 hours a day for the last day and a half and alerted us to the fact there’s a problem.
“The pumps are working as hard as they can but there’s much more water in the system than there would be normally.”
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9 comments
And here is the sandbag I used to stop the flow at its height - still running strong at 3am, but it had slowed by early Sunday morning, and I took it out.
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Nick
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Another picture of the flooding - before the big flow started
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Nick
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
And for those who would like to see a photo of the floods at Hickling, Stubb Road on Saturday:
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Nick
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
This is a bit of a long story, but you might enjoy it! The same problem happened in Stubb Road at Hickling. Hundreds of gallons of backflow sewage 'popped' the drain cover on my property, flooded the garden and french drains and then enterd the kitchen. It was coming up the shower trays. Several earlier calls to AW got no help from them, other than an engineer who said he had ordered the relief tanker to pump out the station to relieve the pressure. Tankers never arrived despite claims that they had been dispatched. Meanwhile the sewage flowed, and AW told me there was nothing they could do to help. I bought two electric pumps and was able to stem the flow by pumping out into the road. AW said I must not do this as it would be a pollution incident! As if there wasn't already an incident! Soon the flow was too great for the pumps. I had to do something, so I made up a sandbag, lowered it into the sewer drain entrance to the inspection chamber and pushed it into place with my foot, leaving me waist deep in the smelly stuff. It worked, and the flow reduced enough for both pumps to cope. AW told me several times that tehy had no resources to help. The only useful help I got was from a friendly AW engineer who gave me a set of decent gloves to help with the job, while he went off in panic between pumping stations - no doubt to Potter Heigham and Sutton - which were also full and well over their design capacity. And there is the problem: the system relies on a 'daisy chain' of pumping stations that move the sewage to disposal points. Housing has been added and AW has been incompetent - or cynical - in planning capacity so that houses like mine and those in this story are regularly backed up with sewage when the pumping stations cannot cope. OFWAT have told them that they must invest in order to cope with climate change. They are interested in their shareholders interests first of all, so they will resist until there is the prospect of a regulatory fine or reputational damage from complaints such as ours. Please do not let them get away with this - make sure you complain and get a reply. The AW operations manager responsible for all this is Hugh Crerand. I have tried to contact him as I have been told that my request to fix the backflow problem for my house will have to wait until they have looked at it further. For those of us sited low near any pumping station, solutions are readily available - AW can fit a non-return or check valve to the domestic connection to their sewer - a simple device - a bit like an automated sandbag in this case! It seems that Mr Crerand and his team of managers are shy of offering this to people like me and those in this story as it might affect AW shareholders' interests. I'm afraid it's only local pressure that will make a monopoly organisation like AW move, so if you are near a pumping station, keep an eye on the levels in your drain covers and report any backup - don't let them get away with it. Even if you aren't affected, please make your support known - after all, it's probably your poo that was in my garden and kitchen! Feel free to tweet or post or link to this and comment to AW.
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Nick
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Yes, and don't tell me the flood defences on the North West River bank have not made it worse. Because I knew it would.
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George Ezekial
Monday, March 11, 2013
We simply have an infrastructure that can no longer cope with the current demands, yet no one takes this into consideration when allowing more and more houses to be built.
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John L Norton
Monday, March 11, 2013
It gets worse then that Peter, look at AW accounts etc., and you will see that the company should have been paid off and debt free well before now, except they lent £1.2 billion to a Cayman subsidiary, so a third of our bills pays for that now as well.
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WTH
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Need to replace pumping system.Why are privatised water companies investing instead of paying themselves massive pay packets?
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Peter Watson
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Running 36hrs solid?? It's a large pumping station there, sure they weren't air-locked and not pumping properly for the 24hrs before sending someone out??
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WTH
Sunday, March 10, 2013