After the flood, some thoughts Ramsgate flooding and the environment.

I know I have posted about his several times before here is a link to my 2010 post about it http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/monster-bass-jazz-funfair-flooding.html

What happens here is something like this. Back in the good old days when we had a severe downpour the water, which collects in the dip of Harbour Parade road escaped into the harbour.

Under normal circumstances the drains on harbour parade take everything thrown at them from sewage to rainwater, this is called a mixed system. The other sort of system is one for sewage and one for rainwater with things called interceptors, which separate our any oil spills on the road, stopping the oil going into the sea or soaking into the ground.

The arrangement now in Harbour Parade is what I think of a semi environmentally bonkers.

Under normal circumstances as I said everything goes into the main sewage pipe there which slowly clogs up, the only symptom of this is that you often get a smell of drains along there. And yes indeed when this happens I do tell any councillors or council officers I speak to, particularly if I meet them in that part of Ramsgate.

Environmentally speaking efforts have been made to stop rainwater landing on the road arriving the harbour to the point where lowest bit of the pavement on the harbour side is now considerably higher than the lowest bit on the café culture side.

The sequence of events in the event of a heavy downpour with a partially clogged up pipe is this.

First the water pours into the cafés and their cellars doing thousands of pounds worth of damage, then as the level rises it pours into the harbour anyway.

Next the fire brigade turn up and pump the water from the café cellars into the harbour.     

Finally the drain unclogging lorries turn up and unclog the drains, this is good news for holiday makers as it means we are unlikely to have a significant downpour until the drains have clogged up again.     

I would expect issues of flooding clifftop to have implications in terms of potential cliff collapse, but his one seems to be a fair distance from the edge. 

 I suppose back in the day before district councils the old town council engineers knew their towns well and didn't let the drains get blocked up to the same extent. 

I also note that the new egg that will be the porch to the Pav has its very own raincoat

Next we come to this evening’s out and about in Ramsgate photos, here is the link http://michaelsbookshop.com/717/id5.htm sorry it’s a bit of a mixture of the sharp and the blurry.