By Isle of Wight Observer
That recent deluge of rain was very bad news indeed for our ineffectual MP. Of course, it’s not Bob’s fault that it poured, but he did play an important role.
You’ll remember last year he voted to allow the water utilities – including Southern Water – many years more time to increase sewer capacity. We all know the water companies favour profit over clean bathing water, but it’s Bob’s job to hold them to account. Infrastructure, like sewers, roads and house-building, is always the responsibility of politicians; if not them, who? They are the ones who spend our taxes. Since that fateful vote, Bob has enthusiastically promoted SW’s water-butt scheme, popping up at every photo opportunity, although not many people seem to have got one yet. They’re being ‘rolled out’ they say; is that code for ‘we aren’t giving many away because they cost too much’? Bob’s butts are window dressing, and frankly, last week, would have been as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.
What does ‘exceptional rainfall’ even mean anymore? Last week, and around October 23rd, we saw proof that Bob’s gamble of giving water companies more time to upgrade has failed. Maybe we need an ITV drama about flooding and sewage; it seems to have worked for sub-postmasters. Politicians have finally jumped onto that bandwagon – 20 years after it started. Even the PM is suddenly concerned.
If you’ve been affected by heavy rainfall, you know it will happen again and every time it does, the roads, fields or drains will quickly reach capacity. When the ground can’t absorb any more it pours onto the roads, and then the sea. The Island’s beaches and coastal waters go right off the ‘turdometer’ scale.
Last Thursday, water run-off was at my buddy’s front door; another friend had it inside his home for the second time since October. In the 21st century that shouldn’t happen should it, certainly not repeatedly.
It’s clear that building thousands of new homes in the wrong location is particularly dumb – putting insufficient drainage is even dumber. The council must call a halt to new builds on green field sites and have a serious rethink about our overall housing plan.
Never again can they put new housing in areas prone to flood, nor should they build anywhere they’ll make neighbours’ existing flooding problems worse! The IWC does plan to spend millions on the road through Arreton. The homes there flood repeatedly, so, why not cancel the traffic lights, signage and traffic calming, and put some big drains in instead?
I don’t blame Island Roads staff, but our roads PFI has been disastrous. Since it started, the contract was cut and cut again. Did the Tories reduce or remove roadside gully emptying from the original contract? Friends and neighbours swear they haven’t seen any drainage maintenance carried out for years. Those sweeper lorries do appear very occasionally, but you’re more likely to spot Bob Seely house-hunting on the Island than see a road-sweeper. That leaves the leaves to turn to mulch and block the drains. Last week I spotted a sweeper lorry in Afton Rd, Freshwater. It was clearing a huge volume of leaves – which mostly fell last autumn.
Ditches, drains and culverts must be cleared.
Pre-PFI, the council used to have a fleet of its own sweepers and sidesmen cleared ditches at known problem areas.
Unquestionably, Bob Seely and his ilk bear overall responsibility for all this, but Southern Water, the council, OFWAT (the regulator), and the Environment Agency are accountable too. Some of them have been asleep at the wheel.
The Islands’ flooding mess needs sorting urgently and our MP must stop sucking up to water companies and work harder for Islanders.