Raynes Park and West Barnes Residents' Association
Serving the community since 1928
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A back garden in Greenway flooded by foul water when the heavy rain caused a drain cover to lift. |
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Another flooded back garden in Greenway. |
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The heavily-waterlogged former LESSA sports ground, with Westway in the background. Not the best foundation for so many new houses ! |
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A back garden in West Barnes Lane. |
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A lake formed on the All England Lawn Tennis Club sportsground off Southway. |
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Flooded road surface in Westway |
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A close-up of the same section of Westway |
The Environment Agency has already sent a letter to Merton Council objecting to Barratt Homes' proposals for the LESSA site. It is hoped to arrange a local meeting between Environment Agency staff and residents in the near future (as of February 2001) to discuss flooding concerns. It is very important to be able to provide evidence of any flooding instances over past years to back our case.
The Residents' Association is compiling a history of flooding in the area which will be submitted as evidence to the Environment Agency. We need your written recollections and, better still, any photographs you have of flooding, whether it occurred recently or no matter how long ago. Please contact Martin Mitchell if you can contribute in any way to this important project ; he will arrange to collect your material where necessary. (It may also appear on this page or on the earlier floods page if you are happy for us to publish it here.)
Remember, we must provide as much evidence as possible of local flooding to convince both Merton Council and the Environment Agency of the potential problems posed by the Barratts' proposals.
Otherwise Jill Truman's vision of the future might come true ...
(This collection of photographs, and a copy of the newspaper story from December 1968, were put on display at a meeting about the LESSA planning application in August 2002, and seem to have made a great impression.)