Anglian Water has not yet carried out any upgrade of its seafront sewers after two catastrophic floods... because it claims it found no issues with them.

After catastrophic flash floods over the past two summers, water company engineers have surveyed the drains and sewers around Marine Parade – but says they found no problems.

The team’s findings have left one senior councillor “speechless”

and angered business people hit by floods in 2014 and 2013.

Martin Terry, independent councillor responsible for public protection, maintains one of the causes of flooding is “tide-lock”

– when high tide prevents the sewers draining into the Thames.

He said: “I’m speechless. I’m surprised they have said no defects have been found.

“The elephant in the room is the tide-lock. If it rains excessively, the water can’t get into the sea at high tide.

“Every time it rains now, everyone is twitching on the seafront. That’s why they need to spend money on the infrastructure.

It was built in Victorian times. I’m sick of Southend being treated like a second-class citizen.”

Anglian Water has previously admitted the system is incapable of coping with “excessive events” and warned severe storms would lead to flooding.

Yesterday, a spokesman conceded “If we continue to get storms of a certain severity, there can be flooding.

“We don’t design our sewers to cope with that amount of rainfall, because is is supposed to be an unlikely event.

“The survey of our sewers near City Beach and the surrounding area did not show up any issues which would have caused the flooding.”

However, the company has also admitted it would be practically impossible to tear out 100- year-old sewers along the seafront and upgrade them.

Instead, Anglian said it had spent thousands of pounds clearing and refurbishing its seafront sewers to clear blockages caused by as food waste, fats, and wipes discarded into drains.

It has also put a new £17,000 back-up pump in Eastern Avenue, where a pump failed during the 2013 floods.

The company says it now plans to use information from the survey, and from from Southend Council and the Environment Agency, to electronically test the system across the whole borough and see if improvements need to be made.

After that, the council would be able bid for some of £8million the company has earmarked for infrastructure upgrades.

Anglia Water flood risk manager Jonathan Glerum said: “All the work detailed in our action plan for Southend is complete or in progress.

“For example, jetting and sewer maintenance is an ongoing job, without an end date.

“The hydraulic modelling of the network is also ongoing, because it’s very complex and does take time. This will be analysed to see what options we need to consider and take forward in future as a group.”

Echo:

Seafront drains are some of the oldest

Drainage experts say Southend’s seafront drains are among of the oldest in the borough.

After two summers of flooding, Southend Council commissioned industry experts URS to look at why the seafront flooded.

The company’s report on the summer 2013 floods concluded they were down to a mixture of unusually-heavy rainfall overloading the sewers and high tides preventing water being discharged into the Thames. A pump failure at Eastern Esplanade made matters worse still.

The report described the rainfall as so heavy it was considered a one in 50-year event.

It also concluded many of the drains in Marine Parade were out of date and were unlikely to work as well as modern ones.

URS has yet to publish its report on the September 2014 floods.

An email from Anglian Water to a customer suggests the company expected drains to overflow, faced with another deluge.

It read: “The stormof 24 August 2013 was an extreme event, which our underground drainage system would not be designed to cope with, so flooding is, unfortunately, to be expected.”

Traders meet with Anglian Water

SEAFRONT business ownersmet Anglian Water this week.

Traders were keep to hear what the company planned to do to prevent a third flood.

Businesses have lost thousands of pounds over the two summers and argue Anglian Water’s drains are clearly unable to cope.

Anglian Water’s response was to point to its drains survey, which found no issues.

Martin Richardson, who lost about £400,000 when his Happidrome arcade, on Marine Plaza, it flooded in 2013 and 2014, was at the meeting.

He said: “They didn’t find any blockages in their drains, but the issue is the capacity of them.

“When the water all comes and drains on the seafront, that’s when we get flooding.

“Anglian Water’s drains can’t handle it and that’s what we need to upgrade.”