Your Say
Hull Floods and Yorkshire Water?
by NigelScurly
about 1 month ago
Last updated 24 days ago.
Recent heavy rain has led me to wonder why so many drains are still blocked all over Hull a full year after the problems caused by last years floods.
It seems when a drain is blocked most of us would ring the council. A little investigation led me to discover that Yorkshire Water is actually responsible for our water drainage and sewerage upkeep!
You would expect that their little vans would be all over Hull unblocking drains ever since.But they’re not, its been left to helpful (and disgruntled) members of the public to do it.
Lately the drains everywhere you go are stinking and surely pose a health hazard as well as increasing the risk of further floods in the future.
How can we get Yorkshire Water to act according to their responsibility in the maintenance of our drainage?
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AR-Tony Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
If anyone posted here the process by which a smell is transferred from place of origin to one’s nose, it would cause many to gasp. There is sumut rotten ‘ere n it ain’t in Denmark!
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Colombo Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
If Yorkshire Water are responsible, why do East Yorkshire workman go through the charade of clearing out the roadside sinks?
During the week following last year’s floods, they (the council) spent two days clearing the sinks between Wolfreton Lane and the City boundary, and some of them still flood during a heavy downpour. Some are blocked to street level. There are at least two, now, with vegetation growing out of them.
Note in the picture that only one side of the road is flooded.
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CoronaSmith Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Thanks for bringing up this important point Nigel! You are correct in asserting it is Yorkshire waters responsibility, and on they have by all accounts been shirking. I recently posted the following on my blog:
Shortly after the floods occurred it came to my attention that since Yorkshire Water had been bought out by the ‘Kelda Group’ (owned by Citigroup and JP Morgan, amongst other money grubbing scoundrels), they had not been servicing and cleaning out the drains in the region.
So, that said you would expect Yorkshire Water to have been crawling all over Hull since last year, unblocking any drains with problems etc. Not so. Still one year on, the slightest bit of rain causes myriads of small floods on almost every street in the city! This is not, as some would iterate, due to an exceptionally high water table or unprecedented weather conditions, it is simply due to blocked drains.
Now it seems to me that having a private company responsible for the sewers and drainage system of a whole city is an incredibly bad idea. Do people not pay council taxes and rates with the notion that they are paying for the upkeep of their cities drainage systems etc?
Yorkshire Water have suggested that they have invested millions of pounds in sorting out the problems caused in Hull by the floods. As someone who lives and works in the area, I can honestly say that it is not apparent where a single penny of that money has gone.
A cursory web search brings up a plethora of reports on this subject, though the local media seems to ignore Yorkshire Waters role in the situation on the whole…
Here are a few links to stories on the subject:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/7104996.stm http://www.builderandengineer.co.uk/news/environment/hull-flood-report-raps-yorkshire-water-1118.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/21/eaflood121.xml http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Yorkshire-Water-accused-of-lapses.3506976.jp
The list goes on. It is blindingly obvious to anyone walking the streets of Hull that a couple of days of rain will cause a repeat of last years flooding. This is not Global Warming its blocked drains!
So who are the Kelda Group anyway? How are they to be held accountable?
"Britain: Water Utility Acquired
By BLOOMBERG NEWS Published: November 27, 2007
The Kelda Group, a water supplier to British cities including Leeds and Sheffield, agreed to be bought by a group including Citigroup and HSBC Holdings for £3.04 billion ($6.26 billion). Kelda’s shareholders will receive 1,100.65 pence a share, including a dividend of 10.65 pence, a premium of 17.5 percent over the closing price on Wednesday, the day before Kelda said it had been approached. Kelda, based in Bradford, also reported a 58 percent increase in first-half profit after raising prices at its Yorkshire Water unit, which supplies about 4.7 million people and 140,000 businesses."
Hey and look at this (might of known some old pirates were involved, eh?)
"JPMorgan, Partner to Buy United Utilities Power Unit (Update3)
By Nicholas Larkin and Ambereen Choudhury
Nov. 23 (Bloomberg)
- JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Commonwealth Bank of Australia agreed to buy United Utilities Plc’s powerdistribution unit for 1.14 billion pounds ($2.34 billion), adding U.K. electricity customers to their British water assets."JP Morgan? Citigroup? HSBC? Kelda? Oh dear, looks like Hull has been stitched like a kipper!
I propose the council seize control of the drainage and water supply in the interest of public safety and get the bleedin’ drains cleaned!
Later,
Corona.
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Colombo Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
If you check the stock exchange, you will find out that Kelda were bought out quite some time ago. It’s the local council who clear the road side sinks round here.
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CoronaSmith Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Thanks for the insight Colombo. But I did mention that above, they were in fact bought by HSBC, Citigroup, and JP Morgan etc…
But none of that changes the fact that Yorkshire Water are responsible for our drains and sewage, they even say so on their own website.
How long can they go on announcing record profits whilst the people of Hull suffer from bad sewers and flooding?
Why don’t the Hull Daily Mail publish an article where the headline brings them to task?
Corona.
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Colombo Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Why don’t we have a prize for the best foliage growing out of a sink?
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CoronaSmith Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
...Or a ‘most exotic disease caught from backed up drains’ competition.
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TheEmperor Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Q:- "How can we get Yorkshire Water to act according to their responsibility in the maintenance of our drainage?"
A:- Sue them if you get flooded. If you pay rates, there is an itemised amount for sewerage charges. Payment of which imposes a duty of care on them. Hold them responsible, and they will quickly learn that prevention is better than cure.
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theagitator Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
The trick is not to sue Yorkshire Water as a company,but to sue the Directors as individuals.I have it on good authority that Dengue Fever is on the increase in Hull & environs.
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TheEmperor Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Ah, yes…thanks for that. Yes, if the directors face losing their houses, cars, money, and even their solvency status, the lesson might go home a little quicker. After all, the only language they understand is the £.
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CoronaSmith Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
What concerns me about this is most people are under the mistaken notion that the council is responsible for drains and sewage, infact they are only responsible for the gullies. Yorkshire Water are supposed to maintain the rest.
I wrote to every journalist at the the Hull Daily Mail about this. But only received one reply. From Angus Young who tells me he is the only reporter ‘banging on about Yorkshire Water’, a cursory check of the Hull Daily Mail archives and I found nothing about Yorkshire Water! Other media groups have joined the dots though, albeit briefly.
Everyone should stop paying water bills until the drains are cleaned.
Hull still stinks!
Corona.
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Chrisinhull Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Yorkshire Water is responsible for the clearance of surface water. Yorkshire Water have over 2,000,000 customers, paying approx £40 per annum that is £80,000,000 per year or eqivilent of £1,500,000,000 since Margret Thatcher sold it off. Councils are responsible for gullies from the road edge to the sewer, but not all, some are the responsibility of the Highways agency. Enviroment Agency are responsible for for rivers and large land drains. ABP is responsible for dredging rivers like river Hull. That I think proves the Councils are responsible for quite a small part of the drainage inferstructure and the money to do something about Hull and East riding is in Yorkshire Waters hands.
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NigelScurly Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Dual responsibility, what a cunning way to get out of ANY responsibility!
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barrycoleridge Submitted about 1 month ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
nigelscurly you sound familiar
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JamesAcland Submitted 26 days ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
With more recent flooding due to backed up drains, which evidence suggests haven’t been properly cleaned for ten years, and Yorkshire Water being responsible for their upkeep, isn’t it about time the Hull Daily Mail made it clear where the responsibility lies?
Reports still talk about ‘freak weather’ conditions, ‘unprecedented rainfall’ and the like. These are surely misleading to the public, more accurate headlines might read ‘Blocked Drains sink City in Sewage!’, that would get the drains cleaned quick sharp.
James Acland.
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JamesAcland Submitted 24 days ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Still no mention of Yorkshire Water. Where are those damning headline articles buy peoples champion crack journalist Angus Young? Are there any real journalists at the HDM? Or do we have to suffer reportage and dumbed down infotainment as an excuse for news in the city? So it goes on:
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theagitator Submitted 24 days ago Unsuitable Content? Report it!
Put Yorkshire tea in Yorkshire water. This would get rid of some of the water, at least temporarily.
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