Probe defends flood-alleviation scheme

29 November 2007

The design for a new £500,000 flood-alleviation scheme which failed to prevent homes in a Perthshire village from being inundated was ‘adequate’, according to an investigation.

A second inquiry into the failure of the Arup-designed scheme to prevent flooding in Milnathort last December has confirmed that the works were properly specified to protect against a one-in-100-year event, as commissioned by Perth & Kinross Council.

But the study, by Professor Richard Hey, highlighted that the 13 December flood ‘may well have exceeded a one-in-200-year event’, and a lack of storage capacity upstream ‘aggravated the flooding’.

Hey, an academic in the field of sustainable flood management, recommended an increase in the capacity of the Back Burn upstream from the M90. Artificial storage of water could be created by building a horizontal flood bank adjacent to the Burn at Waulkmill Farm, he said. He acknowledged ‘it would be necessary to obtain the co-operation of the landowner, and a source of funding’, but highlighted possible funding streams.

Perth & Kinross Council’s environment director, Jim Irons, however, was this week due to advise councillors against funding investigating ‘soft measures’, given that the Milnathort scheme would – once its scoured-away earth bund was repaired – provide the desired level of protection. Irons did, however, back other ways of improving the standard of protection, after Hey estimated that the 13 December flood might have exceeded a one-in-200 year event.

He recommended approaching Transport Scotland to ask it to reduce surface runoff from the M90, which ‘increased the peak flow in Back Burn,’ according to both Hey’s report, and that from Arup – which estimated this added 1.2m3 per second of water. Scottish Water has already agreed to investigate the scope for upgrading the drainage system, which Hey’s report said ‘probably fails to achieve the necessary standard of service’.

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