Heavy downpours raise flooding fears in Tallow
West Street in Tallow was a key point of concern this week as Storm Kathleen blew into the region, alongside severe and heavy rainfall, raising fears that the area may flood again.
This comes after houses in the Tallow area had to be evacuated in October of last year after Storm Babet devastated the town, with some 14 houses in the Cois Bríd Estate, along with houses on the western side of the bridge in West Street, victims of that flooding.
Pointing to the weather on Monday in which several roads in the west Waterford area saw flooding and surface water during heavy and persistent downpours, Cllr John Pratt expressed concern for those on West Street.
“With the weather we have today, I know that the people in West Street in Tallow are again on edge and have been all night and are again now, today, in the fear of flooding in their houses,” he said.
ACTION PLAN
Raising the matter at Monday’s meeting of the Dungarvan Lismore District, Cllr Pratt called for both minor and major works to be carried out to alleviate the fears of locals and for a plan to be put in place going forward.
“We need to be able to stop it and put works in place to at least alleviate it and hope to help them, because if this is our weather going forward, I fear for how it's going to go,” Cllr Pratt said.
Supporting the call, Cllr Mairead Tobin also sought a plan to be put in place for the West Street area of Tallow.
“They are concerned. Storms are becoming more frequent and flooding is an issue that’s being raised there time and time again and we need to have an action plan that we can go to them and help them alleviate their fears,” Cllr Tobin said.
Senior engineer with Waterford City and County Council, Gabriel Hynes, outlined that there are two bridges in the area, which only have a certain hydraulic capacity.
RETAINING WATER UPSTREAM
According to Mr Hynes, the difficulty is one experienced all over the district, where the volume of water coming from catchments is now faster.
“We need to look at environmental measures upstream so that we retain the water and reduce the speed of that water coming down. We need to capture and track that water in the catchment. Farming practices have changed over the years. We’ve larger fields, we’ve now higher intensity rainfall so the time of flow is a lot shorter now and a lot less, so we have higher intensities coming down to our hydraulic structures,” Mr Hynes said.
He went on to note that the matter is not just one for the local authority, but also for the Office of Public Works, the Department of Agriculture and possibly, the Department of Transport.
“We all need to come together and put in environmental solutions upstream of the towns where the flooding is occurring or where our structures haven’t the capacity to deal with this high intensity of rainfall that’s coming down from the catchment. It’s a larger holistic approach with all the stakeholders sitting together going forward to see how we can deal with this rainfall that’s coming to us,” Mr Hynes concluded.