A fine dam plan for A34?

Oxford’s leading politicians have written to the Prime Minister urging him to back proposals for a multi-million-pound channel to prevent the city from flooding.

Bob Price, the leader of Oxford City Council, has written to Witney MP David Cameron along with Andrew Smith, MP for Oxford East, and Nicola Blackwood, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon.

The letter calls on him to back a Western Conveyance project, which they say will benefit the entire county.

This scheme to create a channel as wide as the River Thames to divert flood water away from the city would cost in the region of £160m, with the idea first proposed after flooding in 2007.

But Binsey-born boatyard manager Tom Ballance has come up with his own solution to the city’s flooding problems. His answer, costing £500,000, has the advantage of being much cheaper. It would, however, involve using the A34 as a cut-price flood barrier.

Aged 56, with a childhood spent fishing, boating and exploring the river and the streams of West Oxford, Mr Ballance has had plenty of time to ponder the nature of local waterways.

And for the last decade he has been well ahead of politicians in campaigning on riverbank flood defence issues.

He is proposing a three-pronged attack that he says could be completed this year, cost relatively little and give the authorities greater control over the floodwaters.

For starters he wants to reinstate a causeway that runs from Godstow Lock to the first footbridge on the western bank of the Thames, where sluice gates should be installed to allow flood water over the causeway if needed, to protect houses in Lower Wolvercote.

Then there needs to be a major clearance of trees and silt from Seacourt Stream, Bullstake Stream and Osney Ditch underpasses, where they cross Botley Road.

Tree clearance might hardly be an original thought, but his idea of using the A34 as a dam will strike many as a novel approach.

Not Mr Ballance, who simply cannot understand why others have not seized on the idea.

“I call it the Oxford Thames Flood Barrier because that is what it could be, but they are not using it,” he said.

“What other city or town on the Thames can say they have a flood barrier? The EA has ignored the A34. It’s staggering.”

Mr Ballance said building sluice gates into the channels that flow underneath the A34, between Wolvercote and Botley would mean the water levels in the floodplain around Wytham could be controlled.

He said the EA would then need to carry out flood protection work to about five houses in Wytham and homes in Wolvercote.

Mr Ballance, who managed the Bossoms boatyard in Binsey Lane between 1981 and 2004, before forming a paddle boarding club in 2011, added: “In my teens and early 20s I worked on all three farms that cover this area. I managed Bossoms Boatyard Ltd for 23 years, dealing with floods on a regular basis.

“My three-point plan is based on years of observation and a lifetime of experience, and all of it could be achieved in 12 months.”

He is meeting MP Nicola Blackwood tomorrow to discuss his plans.

But he will do so knowing that the Environment Agency is going to need quite a bit of convincing, with the experts warning of “devastating consequences” for local residents.

EA spokesman Cheryl Walmsley said: “Road embankments are not designed to be impermeable or withstand the pressure of the many millions of cubic metres of water that would need to be retained as a flood storage area.

“To do so would place the communities living downstream at an unacceptable risk of breach, with devastating consequence.”

In Wytham, the prospect of an A34 dam appeared the stuff of nightmares. Michael Stewart, who lives in Wytham Abbey, said: “The scheme involves damming up massive volumes of flood water on the Wytham side of the A34.

“As things are already, the roads in and out of Wytham are regularly flooded. This year, the road to Wolvercote was closed for a week, and only a few years ago the one to Botley flooded too, cutting the village off completely. I’d call it a real dreaming spires solution: imaginative but impractical.”

The EA said a number of options, including water storage, to combat flooding in Oxford had been considered and rejected.

Spokesman Ms Walmsley added: “The Oxford Flood Risk Management Strategy investigated many different options and combinations of options in its development.

“Flood storage on its own is not a viable option. It has been evaluated but without a new watercourse to help manage flood water, a much larger area would be needed for storage.

“That, in turn, would make its construction prohibitively expensive.

“It would also be socially and environmentally unacceptable to many people living upstream of Oxford.”

“We have a strategy to manage flood risk in Oxford that will reduce the risk to more than 3,600 homes and businesses for a flood that has a one-in- 75 chance of occurring in any year.”

It is clear, therefore, that the Western Conveyance Channel is now seen as the only long-term solution.

She said: “The cost of delivering the next phase of the strategy — the Western Conveyance Channel — would be in the region of £125m if work was to start now.

“We would expect to be able to bid for £40m from Government under the partnership funding approach, once the rest has been secured from third party contributions. However, this next phase does not yet meet the economic criteria needed for work to start.

“We have already delivered the first phases of the Oxford strategy and have spent £2.5m on a range of measures, such as the temporary defences, to reduce the risk to properties from lower level flooding. We also work with our partner organisations and community groups to improve awareness and resilience through the Oxford Area Flood Partnership.”

A political head of steam certainly is certainly building behind the £160m channel scheme.

The joint letter from Andrew Smith, Nicola Blackwood and Bob Price said: “Oxford has suffered regular disruption in recent years due to flooding, and serious flood events are becoming increasingly frequent.

“We seek your support in progressing this flood alleviation scheme for Oxford and the Oxford Western Conveyance.”

Mr Price added: “It will protect the economic life of important parts of the county and we are very keen to stress the importance of Oxfordshire to the UK’s economy. We are looking for Mr Cameron to do what he can in moral support as a local MP, but what he can do as Prime Minister is set the context in which funding decisions are made by the Treasury.”

Peter Rawcliffe, of Oxford Flood Alliance, welcomed the support the project is being given by local politicians. He said: “The Western Conveyance is really the only scheme on the table and the only way in which the present situation can be improved.”

The EA is currently carrying out modelling on the Western Conveyance scheme to find out whether parts of it should go ahead.

It is hoped that a section of the channel at Sandford Lock, which would cost around £2.5m, would have the biggest effect and could go ahead first.

Ian Tomes, flood and coastal risk manager at the Environment Agency, said: “We welcome the growing support for the Western Conveyance Channel, which will require significant financial contributions from the public and private sectors in order to be delivered. There are still significant obstacles to overcome in order to turn this project into reality.”

A campaign for an A34 dam is unlikely to be among them.