Tag: drainage

#365daysofbiking No through road

December 1st – Green Lane is a major rat run between Walsall Wood and Sheffield, and has been closed for some weeks for drainage work. Theoretically supposed to be reopening the next day, I went to see how the works were progressing.

Oh dear, I don’t think that’ll be open for a while yet. I guess bad weather must have really held them up.

Since there’s no pedestrian way around, looks like I’ll be coming back along the A461 for a week or so yet…

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#365daysofbiking Stark, bollock naked

October 28th – Telford’s new footbridge linking town and railway station – built to replace an older one rendered unsuitable for wheelchair users – is still plagued with standing water, despite attempts to alleviate it by drilling holes in the bridge deck.

In a total admission of design failure, large diameter holes have now been cut into the floor with grilles like plughole in them. I guess this has to work, if they’re in the right place.

Sadly there is no guttering or drain on the whole structure, and to put it bluntly the drained water will piss onto the commuters standing on the platform below.

Quite how a council and railway management company can allow a huge structure – getting on for 10 million pounds worth – to be built and commissioned with no rainwater control whatsoever is utterly beyond me.

Recently there were posters around the station begging passengers to vote for this ill thought out, awful bodge in some or other architecture competition.

A lot of Telford seems quite fond of this dysfunctional mess.

Telford, your emperor is stark bollock naked.

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March 17th – I’ll be honest here, I can only fit ten pictures in a post so I include two more shots of the deer. But the other two are of the spillway at Chasewater, fulfilling it’s purpose. With the main reservoir overflowing with rain and meltwater, the surplus has formed a stead river along the spillway and ins flowing into the 1980s era storm drain under the Victorian brick-lined overflow. The new system conducts the flow into the crane brook, a tributary of the Footherley/Black/Bourne Brook, itself a feeder of the Tame. 

The storm system is documented in this post on my main blog here.

It will be interesting to see how long this situation is allowed to continue, as the reservoir owners Staffordshire County Council are currently at odds with the Canal and River Trust, who expect access to the water it contains for maintaining the level of the local canals. 

I must try and get to the Crane Brook downstream and see what the flow is like before it stops.

February 20th – The week before, the canal overflow at Clayhanger had been a raging rapid of water flowing from the canal into local drainage. I posted at the time that I’d never seen anything quite like it, and I was seriously concerned over the possibility of subsequent flooding on the River Tame, when most of the canal overflows in Walsall drain to.

A far from dry week later, the flow is reduced – still high by normal standards – but gone is the angry torrent, and my fears of flooding proven unfounded. Whilst we’ve been far more fortunate than other parts of the country, it does go to show that despite massive development over the years, the local drains and water system is incredibly capacious and resilient.

February 23rd – There’s been a lot of work going on in the fields of Home Farm, at Sandhills, as seen from the canal at Catshill. Trenches have been dug along the fields a few metres apart, and pipes buried there. It’s either an irrigation or drainage system going in – it’ll be interesting to see what’s planted here. The machinery doing the job is fascinating.

January 19th – A wet, miserable commute. It rained as soon as I left the house, and stopped just as I got to work. The new Ring Road in Walsall was living up to its reputation – drains all along the stretch between Littleton Street and Pleck Road were blocked, and the road surface was awash with standing water, particularly opposite Smiths Mill. This led to a liberal dousing of spray with every passing vehicle. Remind me why I do this again?