The recent heavy rain got me thinking about the soon to be built and vast urban extension to Maghull of @1700 houses. I went to have a look at the site on Sunday 23rd February. The photos below really speak for themselves as they start with the waterlogged site as I saw it followed by where the water eventually drains to i.e. Dovers Brook and the River Alt.
Maghull East Site from Ashworth Motorway junction 23 02 20
Maghull East Site from Poverty Lane 23 02 20
Dovers Brook at Sefton Lane looking north 23 02 20
Dovers Brook at Sefton Lane 23 02 20 – the bridge is all but lost under the floodwater.
River Alt 23 02 20 looking south from Bridges Lane.
Having lived locally for over 50 years I can’t say I’m surprised by this situation as our low-lying land has always been liable to flood after heavy rain. Of course climate change is making those floods more regular and at times worse than they have been in the past.
What has not, in my opinion, been effectively resolved is how the floodwater is dealt with as flooding of Sefton Lane is far from unusual each year these days. What worries me is how the local drainage network is going to cope after a vast area of presently agricultural land (the Maghull East Site) is put under concrete, brick and tarmac. The implications will not be just on that site, if the drainage issues are not fully addressed, but potentially to the west of it to the River Alt which takes a great deal of Maghull’s surface water run-off.
That the Maghull East Site site will be developed is a given as Sefton Council’s Local Plan has already designated it for building on but, and it’s a very big but, what guarantees are going to be put in place that this building will not make a presently unresolved flooding problem even worse?
Sefton Council and the developers of the land have to get this right otherwise those of us who fought against the vast site being designated for building will be reminding the powers that be that they were warned about the consequences.
My thanks to Andrew Blackburn for the lead to this posting
Great post. One of several vulnerable parts of Maghull, as a knock-on effect is around Hall Lane and Northway. I wondered whether the flooding on the west side of the Northway service road near 313 is linked to Whitney brook?
The curse of predictive texting, my previous comment should have read – Whinney Brook not Whitney Brook, of course!