Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/632952
8 WET NEWS FEBRUARY 2016 INTERVIEW " Of all the towns in the North-west that had some flood defence, while some might have been over-topped it would have been a lot worse without those defences to absorb the speed of flooding. It would have been a much more shocking event than we've seen on the news," says CH2M's global operations director, Bryan Harvey. It has been just weeks since the North-west and parts of Scotland took the brunt of storms Desmond, Eva and Frank as they raged in quick succession during December. The storms led to major flooding but, thankfully, loss of life was avoided. Harvey is the man charged with preventing a similar disaster on a larger scale in London, and he took time out of his packed schedule to tell WET News why flood defences are so crucial to the capital, why the UK's are the best in the world, and why the Thames Barrier will have to go – eventually. Harvey, and the rest of the Integrated Delivery Team, is responsible for delivery of the first ten years of the Environment Agency's (EA) Thames Estuary Asset Management (TEAM2100) programme, a 100-year scheme to protect 1.25 million people and £200bn worth of property from tidal flooding between now and 2100. CH2M is delivery partner – it was awarded the £300M, ten-year deal in November 2014 – and Harvey is CH2M's programme director. The floods that caused such devastation this Christmas and New Year could have been much worse. To illustrate how bad things used to be Harvey highlights the 'Big Flood' that happened more than 60 years ago, on the night of January 31, 1953, when around 300 people in East Anglia, Essex and Kent lost their lives as a storm surge swept down the North Sea. The death toll in the Netherlands was much higher – almost 1,800 people. It is the threat of such tidal flooding hitting the UK's capital that is Harvey's and TEAM2100's greatest challenge. "There's river flooding as well Bryan Harvey global operations director, CH2M The threat of tidal flooding hitting the UK's capital is TEAM2100's greatest challenge