A growing number of local floods are being blamed on construction waste blocking sewers, Brighton and Hove City Council said.
Work is currently under way in Poplar Avenue, Hove after flooding over the new year.
The council said: “We’re asking builders, tradespeople and residents doing home improvements not to dump building waste down the city’s drains and gullies.
“Our Highways Teams have seen an increase in the amount of cement, concrete, plaster and other construction materials in drains, most recently in Matlock Road, Tivoli Road and Poplar Avenue.
“This has contributed to blocked drains and gullies resulting in flooded roads and pavements.
“Anyone found to be disposing of commercial waste illegally could be issued with a fixed penalty notice of £400 and/or face legal prosecution.
“We may also seek to recover the cost of the damage caused.
“Residents can report any incidents of disposing commercial waste illegally to our fly tipping hotline, 01273 295063 which is operational between the hours of 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. Voicemail is available outside these times.
“If you run a business, the recycling and refuse you produce is classified as business waste. This is the case even if you run your business at home.
“You may also produce business or trade waste if you work as a mobile trader. This includes working as a gardener or running burger vans.
“Businesses must hold a duty of care waste transfer notice. This is also known as a duty of care certificate. This shows us that you dispose of waste legally.
“For residents, the following items can be taken to our ‘household waste recycling centres’
- general garden waste
- timber
- MDF and wood composites
- scrap metal
- engine oil
- plasterboard
- hardcore, rubble, ceramics and soil – six standard rubble bags a month – maximum bag size 55cm x 85cm
- household hazardous chemicals – must be in a secure container
- paint
…
The leader of the council Phélim Mac Cafferty said: “Flooding is increasing for a range of reasons from the paving over of gardens to more frequent extreme weather caused by climate change.
“Whether the problem of flooding gets better or worse in our day-to-day lives comes down to all of us.”
Councillor Mac Cafferty added: “A small minority of households and businesses are blocking drains with construction waste.
“This increases the likelihood of further street flooding during heavy rainfall, never mind the real risk to people’s homes.
“We all have a responsibility to dispose of construction waste responsibly. In the case of those households and businesses that are causing blockages, as a council we will take enforcement action to prevent and deter this from happening.”
Southern Water’s network protection enforcement manager Stephen Williams said: “Sewer blockages caused by construction debris is a real issue that can cause flooding and major problems in our network and even environmental issues. All of which can impact our customers.
“We have had several instances of sewers that have required lengthy repairs caused by debris so we really appreciate the support of businesses and households in avoiding these problems.”
So, nothing to do with the fact that the Council still hasn’t swept up the leaves that fell in the autumn.
BHCC / the Greens always managing to blame someone else in order to deflect from their own ineptitude.
This reads like another press release from the Council propaganda department, to deflect our thoughts from what is really happening.
We clearly have a drainage problem in many roads, and we may also have an issue with the incorrect disposal of building rubbish – but it’s doubtful these two issues are connected.
I’m a carpenter and when we knock something down or build something new we cannot use drains to dispose of rubble or rubbish. In my case, there is no rubbish, because offcuts of wood and saw cuttings can either be burnt or composted.
The only time that drains come into the builders’ discussion might be where plasterers, painters, or bricklayers want to wash their tools and mixing tubs. In those cases, any unintended material washed down the drain is likely to be very little. Such behaviour would also be more likely to block a domestic drain at the point of entry – rather than to cause an issue in the road drains nearby.
As it happens, we have had regular flooding at the seafront end of my own road in Hove, and that’s entirely down to the blocked drains, with the sumps that have not been regularly cleared as they are supposed to be (by the council, I believe). Those sumps are not blocked with builders’ debris, but with autumn leaves and street litter that was never swept up – presumably because we have so few council street cleaners. It’s also a long time since we last had our gutters scraped clean.
We know the council has budget problems, but one solution here would be to redeploy the many workers in the propaganda department into the street cleaning department.
Commenter Billy Short makes a some excellent points above.
Agreed, it’s very sad to see the usual professional journalism of B&H News stooping to the level of merely placing BHCC propaganda, without identifying it as such to readers, and without highlighting important omissions in the Council’s press release, and more broadly about the multiple operational failings of our benighted City council!
And all the more so with regard to the various instances of flooding in Poplar Avenue, given that the Reporter/Editor is understood to have a very long-standing connection to Hangleton?
Thus we look at this cryptic opening paragraph of the above article (or press release?):
“Work is currently under way in Poplar Avenue, Hove, after flooding in the new year.”.
Which begs some questions, such as:
– What work?
– Why needed?
– At what cost?
– Who is to pay how much?
– And what compensation (such as a discount on Council Tax) has been, or will be, paid to the affected householders, and by whom?
Depending on the answers to the questions posed above there seems to be serious grounds to doubt the honesty of BHCC’s assertions made during the recent flooding of Poplar Avenue – to the effect that heavy rainfall caused more run-off from developed properties than the street drains could cope with!
Deeply disingenuous – obviously the street-drains could not cope, but that appears to be due to inadequate maintenance (by BHCC) of those drains!
Let’s look at the circumstances – Poplar Avenue has been heavily urbanised for decades, apparently significant flooding from heavy rain has mainly occurred in recent years, thus a rational conclusion is that the street drainage of Poplar Avenue is adequately designed and calculated to cope with heavy rains; IF (big “if”!) correctly maintained by BHCC?
Also, and to whatever extent sporadic in-fill property development might be cited as a cause of excessive run-off, the reality is that new planning applications are circulated to Southern Water to obtain their views on the water supply and drainage situation for the proposed development. They usually respond that their network is adequate – presumably considering it superfluous to add a caveat such as: “If BHCC maintains the street-drains correctly”?
Which brings us to the point, from Billy Short above, that the sumps in the gully-pits of our street-drains are more often filled with old leaves and sediment than that they are blocked with construction waste.
So let’s consider some of the reasons for that neglect:
Readers with a memory of our City extending back more than about a decade are likely to recall that the arrival of the gully-sucker tanker, to clean all the drains in a street, was a big deal – with cars not permitted to park over the drain gratings. So has that now become too much of an effort for BHCC to organise? Surely the procedures play-book is filed somewhere in our Town Hall?
But before ‘Gully-sucker Day’ there’s the excellent points above, from both Commenters, about our council needing to clear leaves from the footpaths BEFORE they get washed into the street-drains!
Entirely obvious, so what are the problems? To efficiently clear large quantities of dropped leaves, during mainly October and November, requires professional high-capacity equipment to shred and compress the leaves (which CityClean might already have?).
However, during the past 15 years or so, our Council has seriously, and inexcusably, neglected to root-prune the thousands of trees along the footpaths bordering many of our City’s roads!
All pedestrians using such footpaths, particularly those pushing children in buggies, those trying to use a wheelchair, and those with other mobility issues, are likely to have noticed how increasingly difficult it’s become to proceed in comfort and safety past so many overgrown tree roots protruding above the surface of the pavement!
Which almost certainly means we have many footpaths where it’s become impracticable for CityClean to deploy high-capacity leaf clearing equipment!
Initial solution? For BHCC to immediately halt all traffic-reduction and cycle-lane schemes, so as to apply those budgets towards a multi-year project to make our pavements comfortable for all to walk on (and able to accommodate leaf-clearing equipment!) – it being widely recognised in civilised societies that, whilst cyclists have valid heeds, pedestrians deserve an even higher priority to be given to safe and comfortable pavements to walk on, surely?
And sadly, as a result of BHCC’s inexcusable culture of ‘Penny wise – Pound foolish’ the roots of many trees look to be so overgrown that they’re probably beyond being able to be root-pruned?
Which means the sadness and expense of felling otherwise healthy street trees, plus several years of caring for the young replacements (with regular irrigation and feeding etc) which will be needed!
With council elections due in May one is left wondering to what extent any Councillor or Party might be able to evidence a clear record of pressing for the correct maintenance of our street trees, to maintain optimum accessibility for pedestrians?
Especially in the context 9f the formally-adopted policies of the Hove Borough Tree Strategy, from February 1997 and binding on the entire City from April 1997 up to the present?
To round-off the street-drain issues is it too much to expect that Councillors maintain both a spreadsheet of the status of all street-drains in their Ward, AND that they mobilise their communities to work with them to identify all drains where the gully-sumps need emptying?
It also needs to be borne in mind that Southern Water seems to employ a significant number of field staff, so Southern possibly knows more about the neglect by BHCC of our City’s street drains than actually does the council itself?
The significance being that the express technical purpose of gully-sumps is to capture detritus washed into the drain, and to minimise such detritus entering Southern Water’s sewers. It thus seems highly probable that Southern is well aware of BHCC’s neglect of this ‘Duty of Care’ (there are parts of the sewer system where the accumulation of unacceptable detritus can be readily monitored), and one bad day a large bill mightbe sent by Southern to BHCC, for us muppets of taxpayers to meet? And even if not so directly then on our water bills as part of Southern’s operational costs?
Which seems to leave a mega-question – just why do so many Councillors, all elected to serve the best interests of our City, and its residents, visitors, and businesses, seem to be so passive and supine when it comes to ensuring that the council’s senior paid staff actually run an efficient municipality (as the professionals of the late, great, Hove Borough Council managed to do, and economically too)?
I reported a number of blocked drains during the recent heavy rain. BHCC response was that their records showed the drains had been cleaned 6 months before so they wouldn’t come out.
Absolutely ridiculous, and no wonder that areas downhill are flooding.
These comments above all read like it’s the same persons spamming.
There was a builder sawing MDF without dust collection, and he had been sawing a lot of MDF. I phoned environmental health thinking this is not good for the environment, this dust is going to end up in the air and water systems and has toxic chemicals in. They said they were not able to assist,but there was a department with staff who had enforcement power to attend and connected me to another team at council refuse department, but the call dropped … The phone line said they don’t answer phones after 1:30pm.
Now I’m reading I am supposed to report builders actively creating pollution as fly tipping?