Oxford needs a better flood scheme
The Environment Agency (EA) has put in a planning application for an Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme comprising flood walls, gates, bridges, culverts, and a giant 5km channel from north of Botley Road to south of Abingdon Road. The EA’s own reports show that the channel is the most disruptive, costly and damaging part of the scheme, yet provides only marginal flood alleviation benefits compared to the other measures.
The channel will take 3-5 years to build, cost at least £23 million, and cause:
• traffic holdups: almost 200 HGV movements/day on the A34, a 40mph speed limit on part of the A34, massive queues at Hinksey Hill junction
• 2000+ trees to be removed and much of the biodiversity net gain happens offsite.
• 1.3ha of rare MG4a grassland in Hinksey Meadow to be lost, with risks of damage to the rest
• South Hinksey village to be surrounded by works compounds and haul roads
• loss of recreation access to most of the fields between Botley Road and Old Abingdon Road for 3-5 years, and forever to some areas.
• The excavation of 455,000 cubic metres of soil and gravel with loss of carbon sequestration
The scheme is intended to improve flood protection: the EA’s figures show the number of dwellings with a greater than 1% annual risk of flooding reduces from 1126 to 180. However, the same figures show that the channel only accounts for 5.7% of this reduction (54 properties), which could be protected by more environmentally friendly and effective methods.
[ Note: The 5.4% figure was obtained by analysis of the information presented within Table 6 of appendix Q. This shows the numbers of residential properties at risk of flood. Assuming that the figures in the columns are cumulative, there are 1126 residential properties with a 1.33% (or greater) annual risk of flooding for the option “Do minimum: temporarily defences for 25 years”.Under the EA’s scheme this would fall to 180, therefore the scheme improves protection (to a less than 1.33% annual risk of flooding) for 946 residential properties (1126-180).Under the option “ No Channel New Hinksey Meadow to Old Abingdon Road”, the number of properties with a 1.33% or greater annual risk of flood is 234. Hence the channel only accounts for 54 of the 946 residential properties. Expressed as a percentage this is 5.7% (i.e. 54/946).]
Surely it makes more sense to adopt the scheme without the channel: we’d get most of the benefits with far fewer costs and minimal disruption. Meanwhile a pumped pipeline alternative with even fewer costs and impacts hasn’t even been analysed by the EA, despite offering more flood protection both now and in the future.
Please comment on the planning application by 9 May. All documents are
at https://myeplanning.oxfordshire.gov.uk, application no. MW.0027/22
under ‘Documents’. The best document to start on is 'ES Non-Technical Summary' (36th document out of 300+).
NB If you receive an error message when submitting your comment to the above link, please send it directly to the planning officer, Matthew Case at matthew.case@oxfordshire.gov.uk
Also see
https://www.oxfordfloodandenvironmentgroup.com/ and
https://hinkseyandosney.org/.