Years of Tory cuts led to the collapse of this Derbyshire dam
Skwawkbox has it right: The Toddbrook Reservoir dam only collapsed because Conservative governments of the past nine years have starved flood defence spending.
Click over to that blog for the details.
A Derbyshire town is undergoing emergency evacuation after parts of the wall of a nearby reservoir collapsed in floods.
Toddbrook Reservoir dam was damaged after heavy rains and police have told 6,500 Whaley Bridge residents to gather at a local school ready for evacuation after a severe flood warning was issued, meaning there is a threat to life:
The collapse comes after years of a Tory austerity programme that saw significant cuts to spending on flood defences in almost all parts of the country:
The nasty Tory chickens are coming home to roost, the problem is it is the general public who are suffering.
Forgive me but in what way is the dam of a reservoir a flood defence?
Furthermore and this is no defence of the conservatives, it is my belief that rivers need to be looked at as entire systems, from source to sea. Flood defences cannot work, effectively, in any other way, because any measure that affects the flow of a river will have affects elsewhere in the system.
If the dam breaks, the lands beyond the reservoir are flooded.
You are right about rivers needing to be treated as systems. There was a (BBC?) documentary about it a few years ago when Cameron was failing to get to grips with flooding in southern England, and it provided a model of how a properly-planned environment could soak up floodwater from a river.
As far as I’m aware the reservoir was built to feed the Peak Forest Canal and for no other reason. The failure of the structure may or may not be down to lack of funding but I guess that it’s more to do with it’s age. David Cameron’s government made a clever move in transferring the responsibility of the canal network from a government run department to a charity ( Canal and Rivers Trust ) because it meant they could wash their hands of an expensive national asset just as it was about to show it’s age.
There are literally hundreds of that type of dam across Britain, left over from the industrial revolution. The problem of lack of inspection, and maintenance predates the Tories by a very long time. The ownership of many of them is not known either.
This one is owned by the Canal and Rivers Trust
Who have not only maintained they have strengthened it.
(Which is probably why it didn’t collapse.)
Profits water companies and their cut backs in looking after their dams rather selling them of for little monies has left many in poor states
How about waiting for an enquiry by expert civil engineers.? I’m a staunch Labour supporter but I’m not about to make political capital out of a potential tragedy
But it is political – in the same way the Grenfell Tower tragedy was political.
Sorry Mike in this case it is not political. The dam was reinforced a years ago on both sides of the dam.
It was the sheer volume of water over topping the dam that did the damage.
“Gravity” Dams are in fact tremendously strong.
(The one dam the Dambusters raid could not breach was a “gravity dam.)
Indeed it is, British Waterways should never have been made into a Charity. It’s as ridiculous as making our road system a Charity run consern. A nation asset with countless very old structures should be properly funded by the government.