Flash flooding cured by culvert and drain clean

Culvert cleaning carried out by Lanes Group has cured flash flooding problems that had been causing serious traffic congestion on a busy East London road.

During periods of heavy rain, the Dovers Corner roundabout on the A1306 at Rainham became submerged in water, causing long tailbacks.

Havering Borough Council commissioned Lanes Group’s London depot, which is located in Rainham, to investigate the cause of the flooding.

Lanes drainage engineers discovered that highway drainage lines leading into a surface water box culvert that ran from an industrial estate to a nearby water course had become badly blocked.

A jetting vacuumation tanker was used to desilt nearly 150 metres of highway drainage pipe, with diameters ranging from 150mm to 450mm. Road gullies were also cleaned at the same time.

A Lanes team also cleared larger debris from the culvert, filling several skips with waste, which was taken away for disposal at an authorised site.

James Ball, Highways and Drainage Services Supervisor for Havering Council, said: “The Lanes Group team did an outstanding job for us, carrying out the work efficiently with good standards of health and safety.

“We haven’t had any further localised flooding at that location since they completed their work, so they delivered an effective solution.”

In all, 40 tonnes of silt and debris was removed during a highway drainage cleaning process which took 10 days.

This included one night shift to clean surface water drains directly on the roundabout.

A CCTV drainage survey was also carried out to assure Havering Council that the drainage pipes and the culvert were clean once more.

Lanes London Area Development Manager Steve Murrells said: “The roundabout served an industrial estate, a large supermarket and the local police station, so any reduction in its capacity caused problems.

“At certain times the flooding reduced it from three lanes to one, so Havering Council was keen for us to find a solution.

“Some of the drainage pipes we cleaned had been buried under debris, so it was a case of using detective work to locate them.”