Storm water

The nationwide scandal of storm water overflow into rivers, harbours and ultimately the sea is something that has been ignored by water companies and politicians for far too long.

The problem goes back to privatisation most certainly but would a national company have done things any better I'm not sure. However, now is the time to call a halt to this madness and progress without delay schemes both here in West Sussex and around the country to alleviate the continued problem of pollution when it rains in any quantity or for any length of time.

The city of Chicago has in place a system called TARP (Tunnel and Reservoir Plan) This was an enormous project started back in 1981 and virtually completed I believe in 2017 so you can see the enormity of this problem.

It should not be beyond the wit of our water companies to adopt a similar but of course downsized version of this. The population of greater Chicago is over 9 million persons whilst the population of the Chichester District is around 120,000, but it is growing and the principle of the project could surely be the same. A principle of diverting storm water via tunnels into holding reservoirs to be cleaned and returned to waterways once clean. Yes it takes money but the neglect of the past 50 or 100 years is now coming home to bite us and we cannot just sit and do nothing. That isn't a choice!

Come on people of Chichester area start writing to your councillors, your MPS and water companies. Make a noise and demand that our precious chalk streams and waterways are saved from this ridiculous, careless and frankly criminal situation. degradation caused by ruining the grass, running diesel engines to power facilities and so on.

Events which remove a public facility for any length of time, for private profit, should not be allowed.

I’m disappointed the District Council is not speaking up for other areas of public concern, namely transport. I’ve heard nothing from them that would lead me to believe that they really want to encourage active travel, and prioritise buses over private cars.

I would think better of the present Lib Dem council leaders, if they had the courage to replace the Leader plus Cabinet system of local government, imposed in 2000 by David Cameron, which effectively gives all the heads of committee posts to the majority party. The former committee system allocated posts to parties depending on their number of councillors. Our neighbours in Arun have changed back to a committee system. Surely this is both fairer, and gives a greater chance of parties working together.

There can never be one party that holds all the answers, but in the present system, one party has all the power, but doesn’t seem to be using it to good effect.