As drains have filled up with rain water this week, a Gosberton woman has spoken out about starting a national drainage campaign after a four-year fight to get answers.
Julie Houldershaw’s kitchen was found to have worse air quality than inside the nearby sewer following water backing up from nearby drains.
She was left so frustrated by Lincolnshire County Council and Anglian Water passing the buck over the issue, she launched her own investigation.
Julie says she was particularly shocked that Highways didn’t seem to have its drains fully mapped.
So she submitted Freedom of Information requests and has so far established a total of 32 local authorities don’t have full maps of how water is discharged from roads and where it goes.
Lincolnshire County Council only responded to her FOI by saying it was ‘no longer communicating’ with her.
“It’s affecting us locally and, I think, contributing to local flooding,” she said.
Julie requested information on the storm gullies in Belchmire, Gosberton in 2020.
She followed that up with queries about Godfrey Avenue and Whitehall.
“When I started my investigations, I believed Lincolnshire County Council when they provided a map, and said all the pipes in one location would flow into one of the dykes,” she said. “It was only when I really started looking into the issues that it became apparent that something was wrong.
“I asked LCC what evidence they had to prove that the gullies were Anglian Water’s and they refused to respond.
“I asked for maps of Donington and Spalding, but again only the location of the storm gullies is mapped, not how they link or where they discharge.
“At times I could not believe the state of our infrastructure.”
Air quality levels at Julie’s home are now found to be usual.
Anglian Water provided The Voice with detailed reasons as to why it’s not an issue with sewage while Cadent, which installed pipes in 1991, has scheduled some works which may be needed for November.
Julie says she’s teamed up with a sewage expert and believes it’s a county council issue, but regardless of who is at fault, the full drainage system should be mapped.
She has set up a petition on change.org to ‘compel county councils to improve and maintain our storm gully systems’.
Coun Richard Davies, executive member for Highways at LCC, said the authority is ‘very sympathetic to the issues that Ms Houldershaw has faced’ and had ‘responded to the fullest and best of our knowledge’.
“There is a pumping station close by and it’s possible that some of our highway gullies do connect into that system, which they have a right to by law.
“We’ve previously investigated, jetted and cleared the gullies and in May we dug the road up to work on the drainage.
“This area is not an at-risk area for flooding, there have not been reports made to us about flooding. It wouldn’t be getting priority over places where other issues have been flooding people’s houses.
“We will continue to respond to any further communication about this issue, as we have previously.
“Hopefully the sewage system drainage issues can be resolved by the utility company responsible. “
