The Environment Agency has confirmed that the £7.5 million budget it usually spends in Yorkshire each year on maintaining flood defences has already been spent in just the last two months since the region was hit by devastating floods.
The money has been used up repairing the damage done by the storms and more work is still needed on top of the maintenance work already planned.
The Environment Agency is continuing to press ahead with the task of assessing the damage flooding caused to defences, saying it is facing a ”huge challenge “. Staff have been working around the clock to inspect over 8,000 assets including flood walls, embankments, trash screens and culverts and identify what repair work is needed.
Thousands of man hours from the Environment Agency and its contractors have already been spent in dealing with the most urgent repair works. Over 100 repairs have already been completed and a further 300 are currently underway.
The Agency said that delivering a programme on this scale across so many different locations and communities presented the organisation with a major logistical challenge: using civil engineers, hydrologists and modellers to design the repair works and engaging specialist skills to deliver them.
Some of the work has included the removal of hundreds of tonnes of debris from rivers - including trees, cars, capsized boats, boulders weighing over a tonne each; footbridges in the River Calder at Sowerby Bridge that had been washed away and a riverside building in Mytholmroyd that collapsed into the river. All of these posed a potential future risk of flooding to communities already hit hard.
Adam Tunningley, Asset Recovery Manager said:
“This is one of the most damaging floods I have witnessed in my time working for the Environment Agency. It had a terrible impact on many communities across the region and many residents and businesses are not yet back in their properties.”
“The job we have before us, of getting our defences back in a condition they were prior to flooding, is a huge challenge.”
The Environment Agency is aiming to get all repairs completed before the winter.
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