By John Baron & Sonia Koren
A £200 million project to tackle the risk of extreme flooding along the Kirkstall Valley and beyond has been officially completed today.
The Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme offers dedicated flood defences to help protect more than 4,000 homes and over a thousand businesses along the River Aire catchment in Leeds and neighbouring communities. It will also help protect more than 33,000 jobs in Leeds alone.
The second phase of the scheme offers one in 200 year protection against extreme flooding along the rover Are and follows the 2015 Boxing Day floods which saw the Aire burst its banks, flooding places including Armley Mills, Kirkstall Road, the wider Kirkstall Valley, Rodley and Leeds city centre.
Storm Eva caused an estimated £36.8million in direct costs of damage in Leeds and more than £500million in recovery costs to the wider region.
Completion of construction of phase II of the scheme was officially marked today with a celebration event at a new flood storage near Calverley. Leader of Leeds City Council Councillor James Lewis was joined by representatives of partners the Environment Agency and other key stakeholders.
The scheme is more than a year late and had increased costs due to inflation.
The Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme has been carried out in two phases. The first phase, completed in 2017, saw the creation of new moveable weir gates across the river at Crown Point and Knostrop together with merging work to the river and canal at Knostrop supported by new flood walls and embankments.
The second phase covering the city centre and upstream has been much larger in scope. Construction began in 2019, with engineering and infrastructure works carried out along 14km of the river from Leeds City Station upstream along the A65 Kirkstall Road corridor to Apperley Bridge.
It includes new raised flood defence walls, embankments, flow control structures and the removal of obstructions at various points through Armley, Kirkstall, Newlay and Apperley Bridge, as well as protecting the historic Kirkstall Abbey site.
The protection offered by the scheme also offers increased resilience for key infrastructure in Leeds including power supplies, communications networks, and key travel routes. These include the railway at Kirkstall, which connects a significant portion of Yorkshire and had previously been at significant flood risk causing regular disruption to rail travel throughout the region.
A key feature of phase two is the largest infrastructure element of the entire scheme, the creation of a new controlled flood storage area near to Calverley. It holds up to up to 1,800,000m3 of floodwater (equivalent to 720 Olympic-sized swimming pools) temporarily in the event of extreme rainfall and river levels.
The 200-metre long structure features two new moveable flood gates which can be raised and lowered to slowly release the water downstream in a controlled way once the threat of flooding has passed.
Stretching from Apperley Bridge to the source of the River Aire at Malham approximately 40 miles upstream from Leeds (64 kilometres away), measures include the planting of around 750,000 trees and soil and land management measures across 1,700 football fields’ worth of land (1240ha) in the upper Aire catchment.
This work, managed by the Environment Agency in partnership with Leeds City Council, White Rose Forest and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, will capture and slow the flow of water down the river and aims to reduce peak flows by up to five per cent, further enhancing the overall effectiveness of the flood scheme and allowing it to adapt to the impacts of climate change through to 2069.
The scheme brings additional benefits to the environment through the creation of vast new areas of habitat for wildlife, improved water quality and farmland as well as restoring previous habitats.
Additionally, a 2.4-hectare wetland habitat on Kirkstall Meadows has been created, while more than 90,000 further trees and shrubs have been planted throughout the Leeds area of the scheme.
The scheme also brings lland previously unsuitable for development due to flood risk back into potential use.
Speaking at the celebration today, Leader of Leeds City Council Councillor James Lewis said: “This is a very important and proud day for our city as the Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme can now help protect thousands of homes, communities, businesses and jobs across Leeds and beyond from the increasing threat posed by flooding and climate change.
“We all remember the devastation and misery caused by Storm Eva and recent extreme weather events, and the confidence this scheme offers will be immeasurable in our city for decades to come.
“This has been a mammoth project, one of the biggest ever undertaken in Leeds in terms of its importance, scale and ambition, and everyone involved in it can rightly be proud of the part they have played, especially all those who campaigned and worked so hard to ensure it would be completed in full as quickly as possible.”
Mike Dugher, Yorkshire Area Director for the Environment Agency said the scheme reflected ‘the new climate we are living in’ and ‘the frequency and intensity of storms can now be offset into the future’.
He said: “Communities across Yorkshire have repeatedly experienced the devastating effects flooding has on lives and livelihoods. The Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme exemplifies the power of partnership in achieving remarkable outcomes, integrating civil engineering works with natural flood risk management in the upper catchments, significantly reducing flood risk to Leeds city centre and the surrounding areas.
“We continue to work hard to increase flood resilience across Yorkshire, however, as winter approaches, always encourage people to be prepared, know their flood risk and sign up to our free flood warning service to give yourself valuable time when flooding is predicted.”
Multiple funding streams have contributed to the Leeds Flood Alleviation Scheme, including government Grant in Aid funding, local funding from Leeds City Council, regional funding from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and others including: Bradford Council, Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership, the European Regional Development Fund, Network Rail, The Woodlands Trust and others.
The first phase, completed in 2017, saw the creation of new moveable weir gates across the river at Crown Point and Knostrop together with merging work to the river and canal at Knostrop supported by new flood walls and embankments covering 4.5kilometres through Leeds city centre and downstream to Woodlesford in keeping with the surrounding areas.
The use of moveable weirs able to be raised and lowered to control river levels was the first time such technology had been used for flood defences in this way anywhere in the UK.
It is important people remember even with new flood defences in place, people can never be fully protected from flooding. Visit www.gov.uk/prepare-for-flooding to find out more.
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