Hurrah for Queen Victoria!
Dear Editor
You recently published a good news letter from Cllr Tanner about Oxford’s proposed flood scheme (Oxford Times 7 April), and here is even better news.
Everyone knows that flooding is tricky and needs state of the art numerical modelling to predict what the water will do. In July 2020 the Hinksey and Osney Environment Group (HOEG) met the Environment Agency, and in December that year we were offered `a separate run‘ of their model. We have sent them and the planning authority an outline specification for that extra run, now shared with two hydraulic engineers to ensure that it is `watertight’.
We are calling the new run `Scenario A3', the good news being that it upgrades the existing streams (natural 1st-stage channels) in order to retain the beautiful and precious existing flood plain (a natural 2nd-stage channel).
Design elements include: matching flow capacities at one existing and three proposed bridges; a 50m-wide corridor free of `flotsam traps‘; climate-change adaptation at the `Electric Road’ culvert; existing Railway Lakes to be linked as a 1st-stage channel; the long-awaited disabled ramp from the Devils Backbone up to the railway footbridge; beams for the proposed Old Abingdon Road bridging to be above the 100-year flood level; and best of all, helping Network Rail to comply with obligations set out in the Oxford Railway Act, which received the royal assent from Queen Victoria.
This is evolving towards a design that everyone can be pleased with.
Hurrah for Queen Victoria!
Chris Sugden and Brian Durham ( Hinksey and Osney Environment Group)