Midsomer Norton Flood Alleviation Scheme
For many years, the centre of Midsomer Norton was prone to flooding. Sometimes several times a year, the Somer rose up during prolonged rainfall and flooded shops, particularly where the high street is at its lowest point in the middle between Martin’s newsagent and the former Palladium cinema.
To prevent future deluges, a major flood alleviation tunnel — completed in 1977 - was constructed beneath the high street to remove excess water when the town centre was threatened with flooding. The infrastructure comprises a sluice gate situated at the top of the high street near Somervale School through which the water is carried under the town via a pre-cast concrete culvert several metres in diameter to an outlet further downstream at Rackvernal. Since it began operation, no flooding has occurred to the high street and an Environment Agency report confirms that the relief scheme remains in good condition and continues to serve to its 100 year standard.
Despite the success of the scheme, some outlying areas of the town are now rated at increased risk of flooding from Wellow Brook due to climate change and the increased provision of housing in the vicinity. In 2008 a new monitoring station was installed at nearby Welton through which data on water pressure and flood levels can be collected via metal tubes placed in the river linked to a telemetry box. This facility is now providing the Environment Agency with extremely useful information for use in future assessments of flood risk.
Read more about this topic: Midsomer Norton
Famous quotes containing the words norton, flood, alleviation and/or scheme:
“Every cloud must have a silver lining.”
—George A. Norton (1880–1923)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)