The strains on our drains

Only last week, I had to negotiate 3 shallow streams on my way to work. As if the journey by public transport wasn’t bad enough, I had to cross rivers to get to get to the station. Increasingly when it rains nowadays, water gathers very quickly on many streets and stays put, resulting in the creation of fords which can be as deep as tyres depending on the road.

When talking about the increasing pressures populations are placing on the existing infrastructure; schools, hospitals, roads etc come to mind yet the biggest and most pressing problems is with our Victorian drainage system which poses challenges that will not solved in the same way as building a school or adding a ward in a hospital would.

Such are the financial pressures and conflicting priorities on local authorities, drains hardly get a look in these days. Little is being done to increase capacity and even less on unblocking those which have become completely jammed by years of neglect. All it takes these days is a couple of hours of rain and most streets are overflowing. With ever changing whether patterns, rain is likely to be a common feature of our winters, the future will add unbearable strains on our drains.

Local authorities need to urgently assess the sate of the drainage system and monitor their capacity of the network of drains that serve our water and sewage waste in light of population growth and plan ahead. Building on flood plains and cramming thousands of flats on even smaller spaces adds to the pressures and limits the means by which rainwater and drain water can escape.

We need to wake up to the fact that irreparable damage is already being done which could take years and cost billions to put right if we don’t put drains higher up in our priorities.