In recent years irregular weather patterns have increasingly lead to widespread flooding and disruption. I’m sure we all remember the images of bridges being washed away and flooded houses last year and having travelled in a very wet Scotland last week, there were already several washed out roads.
Thames Water is planning to build a £3.5bn 'super sewer' to prevent overflow from the current Victorian system being diverted directly into the Thames. Some argue this is a sensible option – after all, just as widening a motorway should help congestion, building bigger drains should help the water problem in the same way – but will it?
Constructing a massive new deep tunnel system will be incredibly disruptive and costly and could, in a relatively short period of time, still be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of water passing through it. More than this, merely building a temporary solution does not address the root cause of this problem, which is primarily surface run-off of rain water.
