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Early morning in Church Street. The buses bunch together. Delivery
vehicles wait outside the shops and cars dodge into the side streets to avoid the
bottlenecks. Then it happens. The van from Thames Water arrives.
Parked over a badly patched dip in the road — evidence of previous visits — it
unloads men with shovels, temporary traffic lights, cones and wooden barriers. A huge
digger chugs onto the scene and is cordoned off behind the barriers. White lines are drawn
on the road and the teeth-rattling sound of drilling begins.
Later in the day customers looking for a quiet drink in the nearby pub put down their
glasses quickly and rush from the noise. Passengers on the buses queuing behind the hole
jump off, preferring to walk rather than wait for the bus eventually to navigate the
obstruction. A side road is partially blocked by the roadworks and cars trying to enter it
confront traffic turning into Church Street. Drivers toot their horns, wave each other
backwards or forwards and ignore the traffic lights.
Passers-by peer down the hole to see new valves being installed. After
more chaos and long delays in the evening rush hour, the work appears to be finished. The
chasm is filled and a coating of tarmac is spread across the top. The workers and
machinery disappear and all is relatively quiet. Around 9.30 pm water starts to seep
through the new tarmac, forming a pool that splashes across the pavement as traffic passes
through it. An emergency pump arrives and its engine throbs away during the night, keeping
people awake.
Next morning all appears well. Not for long. The van and its entourage are back, this time
on the opposite side of the road. The same routine commences. Another day, another hole.
Why has Church Street attracted so much attention from the water company over the past few
years? Why are the same target spots dug, filled and dug again so often over a short
period of time?
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Another water leak on Church St |
The Council, which freely acknowledges the problem, says that the
responsibility lies with Thames Water and is due to a lack of maintenance. The mains
— mostly cast iron— are relics of the 1800s. Relations between Hackney and
Thames Water seem strained. The Council says it had to contact the company chairman direct
about an open trench in the middle of Manor Road which had been unattended for four or
five months. It was then reinstated within one day. Unfortunately, Hackney’s powers
are limited. The 1950 Public Utilities and Street Works Act allowed it to reinstate the
trenches. The water company would recompense the Council. The New Roads and Street Works
Act 1991 does not permit this and, going further, it allows utilities to leave temporary
reinstatements in place for up to six months. That could be a reason why there are so many
near-trenches which act as unseen hazards to a car suspension and cause passengers to be
shaken around on buses.
What lies beneath the surface of Church Street and adjoining roads is a bit a of a
mystery. Cavities appear for no apparent reason and then, when filled, appear somewhere
else. Yoakley Road has had a number of these over the past few years. The Council says
they are unpredictable and believe they are due to old streams filling and emptying as the
water table rises and falls.
Replacing the pipes in Church Street would not mean that the whole road would have to be
ripped up. Bore holes could be drilled and new plastic pipe could be inserted inside the
old iron pipes. In the longer term, however, it would mean that serious consideration
would have to be given to the question of whether the ground beneath the street is firm
enough to continue to bear the weight of heavy traffic. Thames Water’s website says
‘stopping leakage is the top priority for us at Thames Water’ and intends to
halve it by the year 2000. It uses ‘state of the art’ radar scanning equipment
to spot where a pipe is buried or unusually wet areas of soil. That’s good to know,
but how is it that pipes constructed in the last century, buried not too far from the
surface have not been replaced in Stoke Newington? They may be Victorian state of the art
but they are hardly suitable for a new millennium.
As a matter of courtesy, we sent the above points to Thames Water and asked for their
comments. So far they have not responded. However, two days after we sent the fax the
temporary tarmac in Church Street was replaced by a more permanent road surface. Was there
a connection? We’ll never know. The problem with the pipes remains.
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