Hearing about Monktonmead Brook in Ryde bursting its banks, drove us on a little research trip into the history of floods there.
Isle of Wight council papers show that today isn’t the first time that this has happened.
Previously, the IWC’s Isle of Wight Strategic Flood Risk Assessment MK2 (published June 2010), tells us that for Monkton Mead Brook, “the most significant recent events taking place in the winter of 1993, winter 1999 and autumn 2000.”
This report also mentions another report published in 2005, the Monkton Mead Brook Flood Risk Mapping Report. We can’t find it online, but its summarised conclusion was that the “coincidence of high tidal events, failure of pumps, debris in the channel and inadequate surface drainage exacerbated the flooding in these recent events.”
Pumping station built in 1968
From an Environment Agency report in April 2010, we learn, “In 1968, a pumping station was built on the Monktonmead Brook at Ryde, and works have been ongoing ever since, with the intention of expanding the station as and when necessary.”
A previous Isle of Wight Strategic Flood Risk Assessment report, written in 2007 by a company called Entec UK Ltd for IWC, says, “Ryde was identified as being the settlement which sustained the most severe damage during the 2000 floods,” continuing, “Many of the properties were flooded from sewers being overwhelmed and because high water levels in the brook prevented free discharge of storm drains. The high river flow coincided with the high tide locking the Brook. One of the pumps which are designed to help alleviate the tide locking suffered a brief failure but was quickly returned to operation.”
In 2000, 70 homes were flooded
Their summary of the 2000 damage was, “Around seventy houses were flooded by the high groundwater and combined sewers overflowing. Basement flooding was a key issue.”
A few pages on they have a diagram showing the predicted impact of running a “1 in 20 year fluvial event.”
Importantly, the say “the model was run in a ‘without pumps working’ scenario, which is representative of the history of the failure of the flood alleviation pumps on the Monkton Mead Brook.”
Looking at the diagram and the completely flooded Simeon Rec, it looks very much like the flooding that has occurred today.
Flooding of the railway tunnel
You may well have seen some of the photos of the Ryde railway tunnel flooded today.
The June 2010, Isle of Wight Strategic Flood Risk Assessment report also has some details about previous flooding of the railway tunnel.
“The Monkton Mead Flood Alleviation Study (2000) identified that the tunnelled section of railway under Ryde runs below sea level and has two pumps to drain it. These pumps exit to the sea near the hovercraft terminal.”
“It took almost three days for the pumps to drain the tunnel following the event of 9th October 2000. Some of the flooding problems which arose on the 9th were the result of large amounts of debris in the channel. As the flows increased the debris was washed downstream and when an obstacle to flow was encountered (e.g. a culvert) a blockage was caused leading to flooding.”
Good overview of Island flood risk
If you want to get a strong idea of the flooding risks on the the Island, all of the above documents give a really good overview of what they predict might happen with flooding on the Island, and what it might increase to over the coming years.
It’s pretty sobering.
