Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Good grief!!!
Police have requested the closure of the adjacent railway lines amid concerns that the Reservoir Dam will burst, causing flooding of the surrounding area, including the railway line between Chinley and Hazel Grove.
I think you meant to write: With rail firms being fined for not taking reasonable steps to prevent injuries to passengers, it’s not surprising they take a very cautious approach to risk. That's the way courts see the law of the land.With rail firms being fined for not preventing injuries to passengers do silly things it’s not surprising they take a very cautious approach to risk.
I hope somebody is keeping an eye on combs reservoir dam. That's also above Whaley Bridge, also feeds the canal in Whaley, and is (I think) of the same construction. And has received the same amount of rain in the last 7 days.
I think you meant to write: With rail firms being fined for not taking reasonable steps to prevent injuries to passengers, it’s not surprising they take a very cautious approach to risk. That's the way courts see the law of the land.
I see they’ve managed to find a couple of residents protesting it’s “health and safety gone mad”. I certainly wouldn’t be taking that chance, and especially not if I were tasked with making that decision on behalf of others (in this case a whole town’s worth of people).
I didn't see that but I agree with you. It was the expression 'not preventing injuries to passengers do silly things' that I thought rather inappropriate when describing the way that the courts work.I see they’ve managed to find a couple of residents protesting it’s “health and safety gone mad”. I certainly wouldn’t be taking that chance, and especially not if I were tasked with making that decision on behalf of others (in this case a whole town’s worth of people).
Correction: at one point they do say the core is puddle[d] clay, which is trampled to get the porosity out and the lumps to bind. It's what canals were lined with (not "built of" as the BBC says) and they used to drive herds of cattle up and down the canal to do it.I despaired at that article too. Clearly the guy with the "H&S gone mad" quote hasn't yet watched the BBC News Analysis, whereby the inner structure of the dam is basically non-compacted mud and clay from the 19th century holding back millions of gallons of water...
That’s what I’d read too.From a discussion I was having with a colleague earlier, it sounds like the reservoir is a header for the nearby (lengthy) canal and not one for drinking water, so even with the low water levels after it has been partially drained, it presumably shouldn't cause a shortage of water locally
If it makes you feel better, every reservoir above 25000 cubic metres (Toddbrook is about 1.3M cubic metres, I can't find a figure for Coombs) has to have appointed a supervising engineer drawn from a list called the "Reservoir Panel" kept by the EA. The engineer is responsible for supervising the maintenance of the reservoir, reporting on it every 12 months and carrying out an inspection every 10 years. It remains to be seen what the problem was at Toddbrook. Unless the flow was way beyond anything that could have been predicted, it seems likely that there was an underlying problem of some sort - but this should come out of the investigation.
This arrangement dates back to at least 1930, but on further reading, it seems that in 2010 a standards-based approach was replaced by a risk-based approach, which has caused much discussion on the definition of a high risk reservoir. Since this is precisely the kind of change (in the fire protection area) that seems to be behind the Grenfell disaster, I am left wondering. Perhaps we have been lucky this week.