Protection of Tewkesbury water treatment plant
Robust and rapid response to flood warnings
Leeds company Hesco Bastion provides a rapid and easy to install flood defence barrier which stopped the lights going out in much of South West England and helped maintain fresh water supplies during last year's floods
Whatever the cause of flooding, it seems that it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. The task for the Government and Emergency Services now is to ensure that next time the UK is better prepared.
Following the devastating UK floods this summer and daily reports of flooding in the international media, it is clear that – whatever the cause – flooding will remain high on the global agenda for some time to come. As Martin Livermore of the Scientific Alliance stated in his October article on the Contingency Today website, "adaptation to whatever the climate throws at us is essential" and we must deal with the consequences. While the attempt to combat Climate Change is a long-term battle for governments throughout the world, which will require substantial financial commitment, flood defences are certainly something that we are capable of deploying right now.
Technological developments mean that we can at least receive adequate warnings before the rains arrive and floods threaten our communities. We must now ensure that we provide sufficient protection for our key infrastructure in the future.
In Gloucestershire this summer, Hesco Bastion Ltd showed how it is possible to do just that under emergency conditions. At the Mythe Water Treatment Works in Tewkesbury, flood waters left an estimated 150,000 residents without a water supply for a week. When forecasted heavy rains threatened to flood the site for a second time, the owners, Severn Trent, were anxious to avoid further delays in re-establishing the supply to their customers. It was at this point that the experts from Hesco were called in to provide guidance to the Armed Forces and contractors. The teams swiftly installed a perimeter wall of flood defences around the plant, stretching for around a kilometre in length and standing 1.37m high. In just 27 hours, the wall was completed.
The Concertainer® system consists of a linked wire-mesh and fabric-lined gabion that is pulled out manually into position. Within a matter of minutes these barriers stand rigid, ready to be filled with aggregate by excavators and loaders, thereby forming a strong defence wall.
It is the speed of deployment that sets this system apart. Given that locations and levels of flooding can be both unexpected and unprecedented, it is often a race against the clock to put effective flood defences in place. Traditional methods of flood protection, such as sandbag walls, are far more labour intensive to construct and far less effective than the Hesco product, as evidenced by the floods this summer in Gloucestershire.
A barrier was also installed at the nearby Walham switching station, where news reports had shown flood waters perilously close to submerging the site. Captain Christian Hulme of the Royal Engineers, who oversaw the works there, said: "I was amazed with the speed at which the first kilometre of barrier arrived… it is both quick to set out and easy to work with. The beauty of a single storey Hesco barrier is that it can be set out and ballasted with only a third of its fill which would have been sufficient to hold off any low rise in water without delaying the continuation of work, the more fill provided the more stable the barrier becomes. It is such a simple system that has a huge effect."
Hesco Bastion Ltd is a Leeds based company whose unique product has, for the past 17 years, been exported all over the world. The units are used to form blast mitigation walls to protect coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; in civil engineering projects and most recently in flood defence. After rigorous testing by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the system was used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana to upgrade levees and USACE has since decided to develop a strategic plan dedicated to stockpiling units across the United States to offer rapid flood protection to residents whenever it is needed.
The recent floods we have experienced in the UK may well be unusual '100 year floods' but that does not mean we should not be prepared to expect them sooner than the next century. According to a report by Karen Dinicola at the US Geological Survey, "The term '100-year flood' is misleading because it leads people to believe that it happens only once every 100 years. The truth is that an uncommonly big flood can happen any year…We sometimes get big floods in successive or nearly successive years with several very wet years in a row."
Three months on from the latest deluge, we must now ensure that we are adequately prepared for that eventuality.
For further information on the product and the works carried out recently in Gloucestershire, please contact Jonathan Bird, Operations Manager at Hesco Bastion on +44 (0) 207 350 5454 jonathan.bird@hesco.com
