How much of this flooding is due to "the cutbacks"?

[shouldbeinbed]

I'm always amused at the shock and surprise people express when a flood plain does what it is there for. Never bet against nature.

Personally I've always wanted to live at the seaside, 50 years and it'll come to me when doing the Manchester to Blackpool will require a canoe and a diving bell.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I had heard somewhere that a lot of flooding in cities was due to the increased numbers of people paving over their front gardens so they could park their cars on them.... so instead of the rain being soaked up, it runs off into already blocked grids & drains that were never designed to cope with the volume going through them.

I know in one of the places I grew up the local brook was grilled over where it went under some houses before going under the main road after 'people' found out that my brother and I were using it to get around the rule of not being allowed to cross the main road that ran outside our home. We used to go into the tunnel the brook was in and follow it a very long way (several hundred yards) to get to the canal & playing fields on the otherside of the road. After it was grilled over, the road used to flood regularly (as did our garden and several times threatening to flood the house) at that point. It still does!

Sorry folks. It seemed such a sensible alternative as a kid...

 

[subaqua]

I can remember a local field adjacent to the river flooding in 1997. Now there are houses on it, but the developers clearly think flooding is a possibility as on the ground floor all the wall sockets are at waist height.

All this house, factory, out of town retail development is a major contributor with all the surface water run off it generates. You'd think they'd get the infra structure up to scratch and capable of handling the Increased demand, but money talks, common sense walks.

that will be down to document M and disabilty accesibilty not due to expecting flooding.

 

[Drago]

I though that maybe, but on the 1st floor they're at normal height close to the floor, as they are on the half of the estate built on land that didn't previously flood.

 

[Paulus]

I had heard somewhere that a lot of flooding in cities was due to the increased numbers of people paving over their front gardens so they could park their cars on them.... so instead of the rain being soaked up, it runs off into already blocked grids & drains that were never designed to cope with the volume going through them.
...

I would go along with this idea, also along with the amount of housing on flood plains. In Edmonton, North London, the first flooding in their history occured after a large estate as built on a flood plain of the river Lea near to Picketts Lock Sports centre.

 

[Drago]

A year or two back I was ringing round getting house insurance quotes. Johnny Spottiebum on the phone clearly had me on a map because he noticed i was near to river X and started biggish it up, clearly a precursor to the ridiculous quote he was about to deliver.

I thoroughly enjoyed deflating him when I pointed out I was indeed just over a mile from river X, but was also 130 feet above it.

 

[Noodley]

I heard from a bloke that it's all the fault of people from Eastern Europe and farmers.