Grangemouth Flood Protection Scheme

Falkirk Herald

Grangemouth Flood Protection Scheme flood defence plans revealed.  The Grangemouth Flood Protection Scheme (GFPS) has launched a new virtual exhibition to allow local people to view the proposed final design from their own homes.  The virtual exhibition designed by scheme consultants Jacobs on behalf of Falkirk Council, features flythroughs of the scheme and detailed information about the flood defence designs covering Grangemouth, Wholeflats, Glensburgh, Langlees, Carron and Carronshore and Camelon (Stirling Road).

Transcript

00:00 So the stage we're at just now and the reason for this event today is to help

00:05 inform the local community about where we are with the process and

00:09 particularly the next step of that legal process that we need to go into. So in a

00:14 few weeks time we will begin what's formally known as scheme notification

00:18 when there will be a group of the local community and will be formally notified

00:23 with letters through the door and the wider community will also understand

00:27 what's proposed through not only the event today but information that

00:32 will be on the project website. The timelines for that, the notification

00:38 process itself depends on the level of objections we get so if it goes through

00:43 really well and there are very few objections it could be reasonably quick

00:47 by towards the end of this calendar year or early next calendar year but if the

00:52 council make a preliminary decision and that's then referred to Scottish

00:55 ministers it could quite easily be two or three years beyond that before a

00:59 final decision is made. So construction of the project is unlikely to happen

01:04 before 2026 at the earliest. Once we do start construction process it would be a

01:11 phased approach and we'd be keen to look at the residential communities first and

01:16 start from the town and work our way down towards the coast. So you know the

01:23 construction phase will take six, seven, eight years probably depending on how

01:27 it's phased but it will be managed so that the disruption on local communities is

01:32 minimized and we're likely to start as I said at the more residential

01:37 and community side of things before moving down towards the port. Yeah I mean

01:41 there's a number of flood defences proposed and not just in Grangemouth

01:46 town but upstream and those main watercourses, the Avon and the

01:50 Karen and further upstream in the Grangeburn. So there's a number of areas

01:54 where flood walls and embankments would be constructed and flood walls can

01:58 contain sheet piles that go down into the ground to give that strong

02:02 foundation and typically above ground is a smaller concrete wall and some

02:08 places the walls might have stone cladding or might be a formed concrete

02:12 and so that all the information on what's proposed for the different areas

02:16 is contained on the boards that we've got with these events and also on the

02:20 scheme website. Right now we've got two thousand seven hundred and sixty

02:23 residential properties at risk of flooding. There's also twelve hundred

02:28 non-residential properties, commercial businesses that are at risk of flooding.

02:31 So that's almost four thousand properties in the local area that are

02:35 currently at risk and because of where we sit beside the fourth estuary you've

02:39 got a risk of tidal flood risk but you've also got three main watercourses

02:43 that come down through Grangemouth. So along the Cairn, Avon and the Grangeburn

02:47 there's a Flueville flood risk from storm events over the hills and all that

02:51 flood water coming down through the town. So it's actually a really complex

02:54 picture between the Flueville flood risk in the rivers and the coastal

02:59 flood risk from the tides and the different areas will put the

03:05 improvements we've got proposed will protect from both of those elements. So

03:09 it depends where you sit, what type of defences are required, the extent of

03:13 those defences and obviously it's a mammoth project. In total there's

03:18 about 17 kilometres of defences that are, sorry 17 miles of defences that are

03:24 proposed and those stretch from Stirling Road at the bus depot all the way down

03:30 to the port.

03:32 [no audio]

03:42 Jacobs has been involved in projects much larger than this across the

03:48 world in terms of the UK and looking specifically at flood

03:53 management projects. We've been involved in probably the larger

03:58 schemes specifically in Scotland such as the Hawick flood protection scheme

04:03 that's under construction just now, Selkirk also on the borders and the

04:09 white cart scheme for Glasgow City Council which was completed a number of

04:13 years ago and has already saved properties from

04:17 millions of pounds worth of flood damage. I think that the size of this project

04:23 sets it aside from other schemes in Scotland. We've got

04:29 almost 28 kilometres of flood defences proposed. Probably the other larger

04:35 schemes in Scotland have probably been about six or seven kilometres so it's

04:39 four or five times as big as any other scheme that's been done to date.

04:43 I think everything just takes time so the development of the

04:50 project is something that will take years, the design will also take

04:54 years and also the implementation of the project is probably something that

04:59 will take place over eight to ten years.

05:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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