Easy actions that may have made things easier were not done
Picture dated October 1st shows flooding around the town of St Ives in Cambridgeshire on Tuesday
Fortunately, St Ives’s prospective flood risk, at 1.36m, is lower than it was on December 25, 2020, when it hit its highest level ever recorded, at 1.52m. However, a lot of people in the Cambridgeshire town are still upset over the inaction of easy measures that could have resolved the situation, and they have strongly voiced their opinions on social media.
“If the council, whoever is in charge, would care to look at the town’s gullies and drains, especially along The Waits, they’d realize why the town is flooding,” was a common reply.
“The ditches and slipways, in addition to the drains and gullies, are entirely neglected.
“There is no one as blind as them that will not see, even though it is so evident that these things need to be sorted.”utterly startling neglect. The council ought to be sued by each and every person who is inundated.
“There is no doubt that they are being blamed for carelessness. In addition to the Environment Agency.
According to the Environment Agency’s most recent information chart, there are flood alerts within five miles of their local measurement station for the River Great Ouse at St Ives.
According to the St. Ives agency charts, at 0.36 meters, this would be the upper limit of the typical range; at 0.63 meters, the threshold is exceeded, and it may be low lying ground.
However, even at the current level of 1.36 meters, it is still well below the 1.58 meters, at which they predict that “property flooding is possible.”
Local MP Ben Obese-Jecty said he has discussed the ongoing flooding around Huntingdonshire on Heart Radio Cambridgeshire, noting that “parts of Brampton have already been severely affected, and St Ives has also been impacted.”
“With the ongoing rains in Huntingdonshire and upstream, it is expected that the floodwater levels will remain high for a few more days and may even get worse.”
He advises locals who think their area could flood to visit HDC’s website to learn more about their options.
“Rainfall is less than their best case estimate so less impactful than had been feared,” the MP said he had been told by the Environment Agency.
Rainfall from Central Bedfordshire and Hitchin over the past weekend is to blame for this flooding (a 3-day flow from these locations to Huntingdon).
“The primary concern of the Environment Agency is the over 400 houses that have been flooded within the Great Ouse catchment.”
In order to address local floods, he added, he met with the Environment Agency to “assure we invest in our flood protection and pumping infrastructure.”
Many still think that simple, fast fixes could be helpful.
The standard answer on social media was to “sort the drains out.” “What is the purpose of our council tax, which is raised annually? This is a rhetorical question. Let’s watch something concrete occur.
According to a different post, “We have recently had to deal with the problem of extra high flooding, which is of course partly due to global warming causing the ice caps to melt and putting more liquid water into the weather systems.”
“What everyone tends to overlook, though, is the planning department of the local council’s lack of vision, which is in charge of permitting hundreds or even thousands of homes to be constructed on sites that were formerly floodplains.
“There are numerous other locations as well, but Eaton Ford in St. Neots springs to mind. Did they not possess the intelligence to comprehend the significance of a floodplain?
“It seems like they don’t give a damn. As usual, it’s the same old tale of a council that craves ever-higher municipal taxes out of greed.
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