When KFAG first formed in 2005 we seemed to be mostly focussed on protection from the River Greta. Over the years our understanding of our community’s flood risks have grown. Although there was, and still is, a lot to do it is worth saying that, working with (in particular) the Environment Agency (EA), Cumbria County Council (CCC) and the local water company United Utilities (UU) – and with the unfailing and exceptional support we have received from Keswick Town Council and the local community - so much more has been achieved than we had ever first considered: Following the floods of 2005, very early on conversations, led by Lord Campbell-Savours (Keswick’s MP at the time), began with UU over the operation of Thirlmere Reservoir and its contribution to flood flows in Keswick. Improving the river defences was an early priority given that we were told by the EA that replacing Greta Bridge was too costly to be considered (it still is!). There were almost 4 years of meetings/reports/studies/surveys and just when plans were coming together …. Keswick flooded again in 2009. We were in a much better place with regard to flood response and, from here, Keswick Town Council have continued to financially support an emergency response Co-ordinatior. There is a system to turn the Council Chambers into a hub for any emergency and Keswick has a considerable number of well-equipped and trained responders as part of a response which has been nationally recognised as excellent. The 2009 floods led to further analysis of the flood event and more meetings/reports/studies/surveys. Frustratingly long delays. Finally the river defences were upgraded in 2012 costing >£6million We had also been pushing for a new town sewage system, especially as the Elliott Park area was repeatedly flooding with foul water excess from the old pump station and the aged and inadequate drainage for surface water. UU completed the new sewage system in 2012 costing ~ £30million to reduce foul water flooding. It consists of large storage chambers on the Rawnsley site and a system which pumps the foul water over Greta Bridge via a pipe in the wider parapet wall and out west of the town to the treatment works. It was only designed to a 1:30 year rainfall event as that was all that was required of UU. Hardly future-proofed but never-the-less a huge improvement for those who had endured repeated flooding of the worst kind. As a result of many years of discussions with CCC over surface water problems in 2015 KFAG raised £20K for a mobile community pump and have the assurance from CCC that a second mobile pump is permanently available in Keswick until all the major surface water flood risks currently identified have been solved. 2015: Storm Desmond. The Floods of 2015 were a huge blow for us all. To be fair the river defences were not designed to cope with the volume of rainfall that the area experienced over that 38 hour period, but to see tree debris hanging off the glass panels and the devastation wrought on so many locals once again was hard to bear. The EA tell us that there is no money for improvements to the river defences and some locations are acknowledged to be lower than others. The landslides and environmental damage to the area around Low Briery remains a deep concern. 2016 After many years of meetings and campaigning CCC installed new underground automatic surface water pumps in Elliott Park. These can cope with surface water but will never be a match for flooding when the river overtops the defences. 2017 UU reinforced their reservoir wave wall beside the road across the dam following video evidence KFAG took over the state of the roadside wall. UU have now reinforced the wall. We know that there have been some complaints that the road seems no longer wide enough for two lanes of traffic BUT this, we would suggest, is a better outcome than relying on a wall only 43cms wide to hold back so much water. During Storm Desmond the reservoir level rose over a metre up the “wave wall”. KFAG insisted that it was not safe or robust enough to be considered a reservoir retaining structure. There were holes under some capping stones, the wall needed repointing, vegetation was growing in cracks and it clearly was not wide enough or strong enough. Frankly we believe we were lucky that it held through the winter storms of 2015/16. The consequences of failure of a section of the road wall during an event similar to Storm Desmond do not bear thinking of. 2019 The EA commissioned a report from the British Geological Society over the landslide area upstream of Keswick. The experts tell us that a serious rockfall that blocks the river during a period of high rainfall is a highly unlikely scenario. We continue to monitor the area and the deterioration of the old road to Threlkeld which has been closed to traffic since 2009 floods. 2020 The Penrith Road Scheme. It was recognised that surface water would be trapped behind the river defences. When the defences were to be constructed back in 2012, we were told that, if we asked for this to be included in the scheme then it would be prohibitively expensive, basically Keswick would get nothing. So, after 8 more years, CCC finally completed a scheme to provide some upstream storage in a pond by Springs Road, improvements to drainage pipes across the Victorian part of town to the river and an underground pump station on Penrith Road to force the surface water into the river when the Greta is high. As a plus, adjoining the electrical housing for these pumps, Keswick got a nice new bus shelter with a painting of Goldilocks and the three bears! 2021 Construction is underway to put a pipe to the river from Calvert Way. KFAG wrote, way back in 2014, warning of the surface water flood risk to Brundholme Gardens area and expressing concerns about this being exacerbated by the proposed development. Sadly, there were many faults with the drainage plans and construction of the housing development and our fears were realised. After 5 years of mediation meetings between KFAG, the builders, planners and CCC, this solution is now almost complete. Throughout the whole of KFAG’s existence we have campaigned for (and largely succeeded in getting) known problem culverts etc. reconfigured and maintained to reduce surface water risk. Routine gravel removal is undertaken by the EA in the High Hill area and KFAG has submitted many reports to Government, been involved in numerous national policy debates and has been represented on two select committees. We have worked with flood groups in our catchment, county-wide and nationally. So … the projects ongoing at this moment in time: a sub group are considering proposals for the bund behind the Friends Meeting House following suggestions that it should be lowered to prevent deep ponding in the area. Locals are adamant that lowering the bund would allow drainage into the rugby field, prevent depth and spread of ponding which might reduce flood risk for Booths, properties on The Headlands/businesses nearby. Whilst we know that tree planting and the improvement of wetlands on the fells is a good thing, we believe that these measures are largely insignificant to Keswick’s flood risk. Wetland improvements are trumpeted with X cubic metre capacity without an honest explanation that such volumes only represent a few seconds of the flows down the Greta during Desmond. Trees can hold water and transpiration also has benefits but in the winter months growth is slowed and the number of trees lost in the catchment is not offered up as a balance to the new ones planted (which will take many years to make anything like a difference in comparison with the forests loss through commercial logging/ash dieback and so on). Some honesty is needed into the scale of the problem the effectiveness of NFM measures in the light of that scale AND whether the saplings littering the fellsides in their green plastic sheaths will compensate for the daily loss of mature trees in the catchment. We believe in a full catchment approach but, realistically, the area is so large, the rainfall so intense and prolonged in winter storms that the only real solution to long-term flood risk reduction is significant upstream storage. “Slowing the flow” is not the whole story. “Managing peak flows” is, in KFAG’s view, the best way to reduce flood risk. Greta Bridge is a throttle, indeed all the bridges in Keswick are, and so we need to get the water efficiently through these constrictions as the flows will slow when the water spreads across the Howrah’s and on into Bassenthwaite. Thus the risk is not passed on downstream to communities in the west. Similarly, it does not make sense to slow all tributaries down, holding as much water in the upper catchment to reduce all the tributaries of the Greta peaking at the same time reduces the strain on the river defences. KFAG, the community, do not want to live behind higher walls. Thirlmere could and should provide a solution. We are still calling for legislation to manage the reservoir for flood prevention. Dr Ed Henderson and Al Cook gave a good deal of their time and expertise to produce a Water Balance Model for Thirlmere which used the data from Storm Desmond and showed that, had there been the sort of management regime for which KFAG has campaigned over many years, Keswick would not have flooded from the river even in Storm Desmond. Frankly we are no further forward than early 2010 from when we had negotiated trigger levels to try to create storm space in the reservoir. The lack of success in no way reflects the time and effort that KFAG have put in to make our community safer. In 2020 KFAG produced a memorandum which uses Ed and Al’s work to set out what is needed to better protect the community. It had the full support of both Keswick Town and Allerdale Borough Councils.

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