Southern Water Storm Drain

From Historical Hastings
Approximate route of tunnels

The Southern Water Storm Tunnel project was a £50 million project to alleviate flooding in the Hastings area during excessive rain. The project was completed during 1998 and involved boring a 7 metre high tunnel from Alexandra Park to Warrior Square (a distance of about a mile) using two TBM machines, the larger being a custom made Herrenknecht Mixshield tunneling machine with a smaller machine cutting 2 metre high tunnels connecting to other points across the town. Historian Richard Pollard was contracted to produce a photographic record of the construction of this. Since his site is no more unfortunately, the archive of his photos is now hosted on this wiki. The tunnel boring machines arrived on the old Bathing Pool site in 1998, being delivered on a barge - this was filmed by John Bishop in between his official role as a police constable:

Breakthrough

As the main tunnel boring machine broke through at Warrior Square a news report appeared on the television in 1999.

Demolition of Braybrooke Terrace Properties

Due to concerns about the vibration affecting the foundations of the properties, and possibly other structural defects, Nos 11-19 Braybrooke Terrace were demolished in July 1999

1066 People walk the tunnel

As the main tunnel was completed, on the 3rd of December 1999, 1066 people walked the length of the mile-long tunnel[1].

February 2010 Failure

After over two inches of rain fell on the 21 Feb 2010, the tunnel between Warrior Square and Alexandra Park became full to capacity (52 Million Litres). This combined with an exceptionally high tide, overcame a man-hole on the connection between the pumps and the outfall by Warrior Square, resulting in the underground car park being flooded and necessitating over 3 miles of the A259 to be closed by police whilst water was pumped out and the road surface repaired.[2]

Images

References & Notes