Beckington
Beckington Drainage Review and Options Appraisal
In the autumn of 2017 Calm Engineering were called to a site in Beckington to inspect a recently built SuDS scheme. During a meeting with residents it became apparent that the issues relating to this scheme were not the only water issues in the village. One poor resident had been flooded with sewage only 4 months prior to our visit and another resident had been forced to install a pump in his back garden to prevent his living room from flooding every time it rained. It turned out that this small village has had a long history of flooding, the causes of which were poorly understood.
About the project.
On behalf of Mendip District Council, our Client, we secured funding through the Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA) to undertake a detailed review of the drainage in the village. The purpose of the review was to investigate the causes of surface and foul water flooding within the village of Beckington and to determine appropriate options to reduce flooding and increase resilience whilst also enhancing the local environment and improving water quality.
Various drainage surveys had been carried out in the past for Wessex Water (WW) and Somerset County Council’s Highways Department (SCC). A review of these early surveys revealed a number of significant gaps in our understanding of how surface water runoff, following heavy rainfall, is conveyed through Beckington, and how different areas are, or are not, connected together.
Calm Engineering co-ordinated and supervised the additional surveys through 2019 and 2020 to supplement the information from WW and SCC Highways and to fill the gaps identified in our understanding of the drainage network. We then used this information to identify deficiencies within the drainage system that were contributing to flooding within the village, so that solutions could be identified.
Potential solutions include options that will reduce surface water runoff from roads and fields (via attenuation); improvements to highways drains and culverted watercourses (condition and capacity) and the disconnection of foul sewer misconnections to improve capacity and reduce the risk of foul sewer flooding. Calm Engineering have now been appointed by Mendip District Council to coordinate the delivery of the proposed solutions through multi-agency collaboration and secure the required funding for delivery through 2021/22.
