Entries by kate.pollard

A Record Breaking Month for Pumping

February 2024 proved to be a record breaker within a record-breaking year for pumping at St Germans, the UK’s largest land drainage pumping station. In February we pumped 58,490 Megalitres of water at St Germans, the equivalent of the volume of 14.6 Wembley Stadiums and the greatest volume we have ever pumped in a calendar […]

Pumping Volumes at St Germans Pumping Station

For the period October – December 2023 we pumped 80,812 Megalitres of water at St Germans Pumping Station to protect lives and livelihoods from flooding. This is the equivalent of 32,325 Olympic sized swimming pools. This is the most we have pumped at the station over an October – December period. It is worth remembering […]

OFGEM’s Review of Standing Charges

Our response to OFGEM’s review of standing charges We welcome OFGEM’s call for input into its review of standing charges. We feel that the Targeted Charging Review did not consider the bespoke needs and role of the Internal Drainage Board (IDB) sector within its concept and therefore its implementation has been unfair. Here at the […]

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Water Level Update – 4th January 2024 – 09:30am

Whilst the skies may be clear today, our drainage system is under stress. Yesterday saw St Germans Pumping Station discharging 77 cubic metres of water per second. We have never previously needed to pump to this level. There are still vast quantities of water within our system, being pumped into our system by Internal Drainage […]

Pumping Operations Trial – October 2023 to March 2024

Given our changing climate, we need to explore if and how the Middle Level system could be operated more efficiently and effectively. We have produced a briefing to explain the background and context for a pumping operations trial that we recently commenced, with Storm Babet being the first test within this.

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Navigation News

For 30 years Paul Grodkiewicz has been at the heart of our navigation service in his role as lock-keeper at Salters Lode. Paul has recently confirmed his intention to retire at the end of February 2024 and our plan is that Paul’s wife, Karen Hills, takes on the role. I’m sure our boating community will […]

Navigation Text Message Service

In response to the recent feedback, we are looking to fast-track the introduction of a text messaging service for the navigation community through the use of a government platform. We are likely to only be able, at least initially, to manage the service during working hours with anything outside of this being on a reasonable […]

Flood Action Conference 2023

Cambridgeshire County Council like to invite local community representatives to their Flood Action Conference which will take place on Thursday 21st September 2023 at Burgess Hall in St Ives from 10:15 to 16:30. The conference has been organised by the Community Flood Action Programme team (part of the Flood Risk team) and is open to […]