Forums Forums Street News West Kirby flood defences

The unsightly and expensive new wall built along South Parade seems to be another engineering triumph for Wirral council.

Not only was it useless, something we have come to expect, it appears to have been WORSE than useless, keeping the water that splashed over in place it to excitingly flood the property it was supposed to protect. The staff in the Cafe were rescued by the RNLI. What fun that must have been!

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2024-04-09/cafe-workers-rescued-by-rnli-after-storm-causes-flooding

A better solution might have ben to have a gentle slope into the marine lake, with obstacles along it to break the momentum of the waves heading for the shore. Just a thought. It's all temporary anyway. When we have melted the Greenland and Antarctic the whole area will be under 70 to 100 metres of water.

I did laugh at the original specification and something that the Council are still repeating. ..... Any water that tops the barrier will go down the surface water drains back into marine lake. The people that wrote that obviously haven't got the slightest inkling of what they are talking about. If the water in marine lake was low enough for drainage to happen easily, then the water wouldn't be topping the barrier.

There have been a lot of complaints that the building workers and Council workers received abuse, this was out of obvious frustration at an ill thought out plan. The Council should have asked themselves why there was such a high level of emotion

I've not checked, but have they now removed the double yellows across the road from the seating area beside the cafe? The yellow lines were there to allow a view across marine lake from the seating which is now pointless.

The barrier is also a loss of amenity to the many people that used to park up to view marine lake, this included elderly and disabled people with limited mobility. We have similar loss of amenity in Birkenhead Park as well.

Overall a fail, an alternative solution could have been making the marine lake perimeter into a full breakwater killing the swell before it hits the seawall, this would have achieved at least two objectives in one go but would have been more expensive in the short term.

As with Hoylake, Neston, Thurstaston and Parkgate the sand level is going to continue to rise and marine lake will become uneconomic if it isn't turned into a full marina first. The Wirral will be like Parkgate along much of its riverline, including the east side if the Mersey barrage goes ahead. Welcome to mosquito Wirral.

They are now claiming it is a success because the water was far less wild inshore of the barrier!

Excuses, excuses, excuses.....