Severn Trent Water has used an old disused pipe on its network to deliver an innovative solution to sewer flooding in Stoke.

The flood alleviation scheme was designed to address the the threat of sewer flooding every time it rains to households in Barlaston. Severn Trent engineers found an innovative way to help protect the properties by using an unused pipe which kept project costs down.

Engineer Adam Walker, said:

“As many of the residents in the Old Road area of Barlaston will know, sewer flooding can be a problem here. We don’t want our customers to suffer, so we wanted to put a solution in place to help.  A scheme like this can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds, but we want to keep our customers’ bills as low as possible, and this means looking for innovative ways to do things. 

“When designing the flood alleviation scheme, we saw that there was an existing unused pipe in the ground at the nearby sewage treatment works.  Rather than spend lots of money to dig up the road to install a new pipe, causing disruption for the local community, we decided to see if we could use the existing one.  With a lot of thought, planning and investigation, we found that the pipe was in good condition, and we could connect it to the existing sewer pipes.

"Once in place, the whole system, including the existing pipe should now be able to handle much more storm water, meaning sewers shouldn’t overflow, and customers should no longer be flooded."

The work, which is currently being carried out by Severn Trent’s  contract partner, Amey, is expected

to be complete by the end of November.