Moving bags of stone
(Bank repair after 2024 failure – awaiting image!)
There are reports of yet another Jubilee River bank and/or bed problem. After £100m expenditure over twenty years ago – the JR still repeatedly dumps manually (EA) controlled Thames flood water onto my patch and this year (2024) we flooded for the fourth time this century. Sub-standard in concept, design and construction it is time for the EA to be both honest and accountable.
(Awaiting image of 2024 bank repair)
Today – my view is that the EA is behaving just like the Post Office. The cultural shortcomings need identifying and fixing. I look forward to introduction of the proposed ‘duty of candour’ legislation.
Just look what AI reveals
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2003 floods
The Jubilee River experienced bank collapse during the 2003 floods. The Environment Agency (EA) admitted to withholding information about structural problems in the river that had been known about as early as November 2002.
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Erosion
The Jubilee River’s banks have eroded in several places, including at Taplow Sluice, Marsh Lane, Manor Farm, and Datchet.
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Design and construction defects
An independent assessment found that the river’s actual capacity was only two-thirds of its design capacity. The assessment cited several factors, including banks that were too low, inappropriate materials, and failure to follow standard design criteria. The EA sued the lead design consultants and recovered £2.75 million in an out-of-court settlement.
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High rainfallHigh rainfall in recent winters has caused more erosion of the Jubilee River. In December 2024, the EA dropped around 100 tonnes of rock from a helicopter to plug an eroded section of the river. The EA said that the repairs were part of the river’s “midlife refurbishment”.
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January 2003 Floods and Jubilee River Bank CollapseAt the FRAG Open Day held at Spelthorne on 27th April 2004 the Environment Agency, under pressure, admitted the reason for not com…
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Jubilee River – WikipediaWhen flood water was admitted to the channel, the flows were well short of its designed maximum flow capacity, and yet there was s…Wikipedia
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‘Needs of Jubilee River’ to be reviewed after emergency works 2 days ago — Sam Leech. 05:00PM, Monday 16 December 2024. Photo: Environment Agency. Emergency works to shore up a slipped riverbank …Maidenhead Advertiser
http://www.fraw.org.uk/…/radioactive_substances_in_se.pdf
[link not working?] and I would draw attention to the 2 paragraphs on p4 beginning with “The future of Harwell at …” So lightly radio-active wet silt (even if at low activity levels) is distributed by flood flows into our homes, gardens and surroundings,
where it dries into fine dust and passes thence into our lungs and bloodstream. Well, you wouldn’t want your workforce handling that sort of stuff, would you? Unfortunately, it is by deliberately ceasing river maintenance and thus leaving the rivers to clog in places and erode in others that we get these recent and repeated floods, which bring ashore this finest of silt, with its vast surface area per gramme, onto which
such undesirable radio-nucleides so readily adsorb.
“As for how much surface we are to expect from fine river silt, this has been shown to be in the region of 22 square metres per gramme of silt – see:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/abs/pii/S0883292710001356 [Link not working?] or comparison, the area of an Association Football field is about 7000 square metres, so the particles in just 0.32kg of river silt would be likely to have the same total surface area as a Premier League pitch. It is onto that surface, and particularly onto the corners and edges of those ultra-fine silt dust particles, which have high levels of affinity for these materials that unwelcome substances discharged into our rivers
over several decades (including all the things we really don’t need to inhale), can and do so readily attach themselves.”
Having lived in Wraysbury all my life and present house for the last 45 yrs since the opening of the jubilee river I have flooded several times and each year when winter comes we live in fear of it destroying our house again as the water laps at the doorstep only one inch away from another disaster. As someone in their mid 70’s I despair at the EA’s excuses by telling me it’s nothing to with the Jubilee River. I’m old but not stupid. Admit it EA the jubilee River has been a complete failure for the village of Wraysbury.