Posted on July 5, 2016
By Paul Cargill, Daily Record
A Bankfoot resident has questioned the worth of Perth and Kinross Council’s huge spend with private consultants over the years after they failed to come up with an “economically viable” flood prevention scheme for the village.
Back in April the PA revealed how PKC spent over £7m with civil engineers Halcrow over a five-year period during which paperwork on contract agreements appears to show the council originally agreed only to spend around £2m with the company.
The Bankfoot resident, whose neighbour’s property was flooded during last December’s severe rainstorms, got in touch after reading the piece which went into detail about some of the work done by Halcrow during this time, including work on a suitable flood prevention scheme for Bankfoot.
According to historic reports that went to PKC’s environment committee, Halcrow, now CH2M Hill following a takeover in 2011, were tasked to come up with a “Flood Scheme Outline Design” for Bankfoot in April 2009, with an order value of £140,000, and then a “Flood Mitigation Scheme” in April 2010, with an order value of another £145,000.
But the Bankfoot resident, who does not wish to be named, told the PA that so far no scheme has actually been delivered to prevent another flood happening in the village and also claimed the council had refused to hand over information on Halcrow’s work.
The man, who believes the simplest solution to stop more flooding is to dredge a burn which overflowed during December’s storms, revealed he had written to Perthshire North MSP John Swinney asking him to find out what happened to the work.
But in a letter to Mr Swinney, seen by the Bankfoot resident and now the PA, the council’s head of environmental and consumer services, Willie Young, told the MSP that despite the huge spend with Halcrow over the years the company “could not identify an economically viable flood scheme”.
The letter read: “My first comment regarding your letter would be that flooding cannot solely be attributed to one factor (in this case, a perceived lack of dredging).
“Flooding occurs due to a number of factors including preceding weather conditions, antecedent ground conditions and river channel/floodplain capacities.
“Flooding is very rarely attributable to any one factor and as such any flood risk management interventions, such as dredging, require careful planning and consideration.”
And the letter continued: “The council engaged consultants, CH2M Hill (Halcrow), to carry out a flood study for this area. Among other potential options, the flood study considered if dredging would be a feasible flood risk management option for Bankfoot.
“However the consultant’s findings – which will be reported to the community shortly – indicate that the Glenshaugh Burn and the Garry Burn are currently stable and are not prone to silting up.
“Dredging would increase flood risk in other parts of the town as it would allow more water to pass beyond existing bridges which currently attenuate flood flows.
“In addition, dredging work would de-stabilise river banks and lead to further sedimentation issues and an increase in flood risk. It was also found that dredging would not be economically viable as a long-term solution to flooding, and in general was not technically feasible through much of the town.”
The Bankfoot resident has since told the PA he is deeply unimpressed with the council’s response to Mr Swinney, dismissing much of the detail in the letter as council “gobbledegook”.
“They say you can’t dredge the burn, you can’t do this and you can’t do that,” he said. “But they won’t even tell me what Halcrow did. And yet they spent over a quarter of a million pounds. I don’t think they actually did anything.
“Right now, if it rains, we have sewage coming up out of manholes and lying for weeks. People have floodwater and sewage coming up in their toilet pans.
“My neighbour has to move out in December because the water was coming up through her floorboards. Why are they just letting that happen? It’s barmy.
“There has to be an easy solution to all this. Why don’t they just dredge the burn? Or put up a simple dam or something like that?
“They can spend millions on Perth Theatre and things like that, but the ordinary residents don’t seem to matter. It’s just crazy.”
Asked to explain exactly what happened to all the work carried out by Halcrow a PKC spokeswoman said an earlier flood study carried out by consultants Mouchel had indicated a flood prevention scheme would be “economically viable”.
She said Halcrow were then hired to “take this forward” but they later reported that following data gathering and analysis, topographic surveys, hydrologic work, hydraulic modelling, an economic appraisal and other related work the scheme was deemed “no longer economically viable”.
The spokeswoman continued: “The council is not able to determine if a flood scheme is feasible or economically viable until consultants are engaged to carry out the necessary study work and investigations; which in the case of Bankfoot it was concluded after the investigations a flood scheme was not economically viable.
“The council has implemented some localised improvements in the area. The flood scheme investigations have also led to improved understanding of flooding in the area and will be used to inform other on-going actions to manage flood risk.”
The spokeswoman added that Halcrow were only paid around £230,000 for their work on the Bankfoot scheme, with a further £36,000 going to other companies who carried out ground investigation works and an environmental impact assessment.
Source: Daily Record
