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CE Drainage Complaints

1st February 2021 @ 6:06am – by Roy Plume
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ROADS AND DRAINAGE

We live at the School Lane/ Woore Road /Salford junction and have also suffered at the hands of CE Highways due to their drainage maintenance failures.

The road grids on the old PO side of Stafford Street starting by the church enter a 6" pipe that runs down under Stafford St to discharge in the brook near the Woore Rd bridge. (see
photo) That is what is supposed to happen.

Unfortunately for us the last 15 metres of the pipe runs under our back garden before reaching the brook. During the rains of last Aug/Sept/Oct we began to find a thick black diesel smelling liquid oozing and then gushing from the garden down some steps onto the footpath around the house and soaking into the ground. In one severe storm it was deep enough to put the air pump in danger (see photo).

Having had a garden wall damaged by traffic vibration I thought the pipe may have been similarly broken and so contacted CE Highways. After numerous conversations and not being fobbed off by claims it was some other dept's responsibility I was able to arrange for an inspector to visit the site on 10th Nov. (as it turned out he said he was their only inspector)

After a standoff: him telling me that the maintenance of the pipe once it entered my property was my responsibility (I think that is the case, beware others) and me insisting that they had not cleaned the pipe in the 34 years we had lived here; he agreed to arrange for it to be jet washed but warned he would first have to apply for a road closure permit to site the equipment, a lengthy process. All this time the water would still be causing pollution whenever it rained.

In frustration I exposed the pipe (see photo and found it to be a 6" clay land drainage pipe in short sections laid end to end with no joints. It did not appear to be broken. A blockage had caused the pressure of the water to burst through between the pipes flooding the garden and then the path around the house.

This could not be allowed to continue and getting no offer of help from CE and at considerable risk to myself I rodded the pipe by standing in the brook and with 6 drain rods and an arm length broke through the blockage which was mainly compressed leaves and silt.
BEWARE if you ever have to do this, stand to the side when you break through.

After a change of clothes and numerous showers I informed CE Highways what I had done. This began in early November and I'm still waiting for the jetting of the whole pipe. Of course the cleaning up of the mess has been left to me.

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