Talks between council officials and Scottish Water could be on the cards in a bid to solve flooding problem which have dogged an award-winning takeaway in Helensburgh.
The Wee Kelpie on West Clyde Street has been dogged by flooding despite the pavement being redesigned as part of Argyll and Bute Council’s £6.6m CHORD project.
A council report says the problem needs to be addressed by Scottish Water, who approved the CHORD work, and said flooding on the road in that area pre-dated CHORD, but does appear to concede that the camber on the new footpath has made the situation worse: “The flooding prior to CHORD would have been more focussed on the carriageway rather than on the footway.
“During extreme weather events the Scottish Water system is struggling to accept the flows, as a result ponding of surface water will occur on the footway adjacent the Wee Kelpie, as this is the lowest point on West Clyde Street.”
It states that the CHORD work was not designed to address “historical capacity issues, relating to Scottish Water’s infrastructure”.
The report by executive director development and infrastructure services Pippa Milne takes great care to state that the CHORD design was approved by Scottish Water but concedes that the council is responsible for management and maintenance of road and pavement gullies.
She warns that further flooding would lead to ‘reputational risk’ for the council and suggests that councillors may wish to tackle the flooding in that area by ‘providing flood gates funded through CHORD as a gesture of goodwill’.
And she suggests a ‘detailed technical meeting to discuss and agree a way forward’ between Scottish Water and the council is set up as a matter of urgency.
The report will be discussed at Tuesday’s meeting of the council’s Helensburgh and Lomond area committee.
I fully understand that there needs to be something done, however I don’t think water running off the buildings surrounding this area helps. This is due to damaged and poorly maintained guttering and down pipes. When we have heavy rain a large flows of water can be seen from a lot of these premises around the area mentioned. So I don’t think all the blame should be steered towards the contractor and owners of these premises should also be approached.