Interesting video form a couple of years ago, showing the flood pumps in operation, and it then goes on to show the culvert (with new protection rails) which I think is at Aitkinsons yard and which was dug out by the golf club a few years back to improve drainage (it didn't)
We had a quote in post #81
from The (NWE) Mail, about the golf club (and perhaps their neighbours) doing work on the Seldom Seen culvert:
Grange Golf Club has a permit to excavate silt from the outfall of Seldom Seen Culvert, under J T Atkinson Builders’ Merchant, out into Morecambe Bay for a distance of 30 metres, once a year until 2027.
The club has applied to the Environment Agency (EA) to vary this permit further to allow it to form a channel from the outfall of Seldom Seen Culvert to the River Kent in the bay.
He (a director of the club) also said:
If the two outlets were working to how they were designed to be then there wouldn’t be the accumulation of water there is. Water would fall and it would discharge into the bay.
That may be optimistic - the expert view is that this part of Morecambe Bay is filling up with sand, so while the high tide level has gone up a little (due to global warming), the low tide level has gone up more. The culvert and flap valve can discharge to the sea only near low tide, and if they discharge less and for less of the tide's cycle, the drain will fill and overflow with less rain input. The only way to make the current arrangement work as intended is to add a big pump (as suggested by AECOM).
That article also had this:
The EA said it carried out extensive repairs to part of the River Winster flood embankment in 2022. During this time they also installed a new headwall structure and flap valve, as well as carrying out channel maintenance on Meathop Road Drain.
That wasn't the work on the sea wall in TE's videos (which must have been done by NR), that was the river bank of the Winster near the sluice. The contractor was Volker Ground Engineering, who produced
a description of the work with pictures. They do not mention the flap valve; perhaps someone else did that.
Another article from The Mail has pictures of the crane coming to do its stuff, and also this half-helpful statement:
Around 150m away from the derailment location, a void in the ground had opened which has been described as a sinkhole.
For context, from the Seldom Seen culvert at the eastern end of Meathop Drain to the collapse (also the site of NR's pump hoses and the old channel of the Winster) is 300m, to the western end and the flap valve into the Winster New Cut is 1750m.
