Flooding in communities like Tenbury Wells could turn into an environmental catastrophe

In Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, we were one of the first towns to be hit by Storm Dennis floods, and one of the worst affected. While everyone waited for the storm to hit, the most striking thing was the sense of vulnerability due to the lack of flood defences.

The Environment Agency (EA), as part of the multiagency response, did what it could. It provided numerous “flood warnings – risk to life” in advance of the River Teme bursting its banks, and sandbags were made available.

It was down to everyone in the town to collect the sandbags themselves to shore up their homes and businesses. Of course, many people, particularly the elderly, couldn’t lift a sandbag, so the community worked together and put the rudimentary flood defences in place. Fortunately, we’re a farming town and people are used to mucking in. But despite everyone’s efforts, the rains continued on Sunday and dirty water began to seep into over 100 homes and businesses. People had to be rescued on boats by the multiagency response teams including the amazing volunteers of the West Mercia Search and Rescue.

This isn’t a criticism of the EA or the local council. It was a national emergency, and yet there appeared to be a lack of a plan. Reactions in my community reinforced my impression that people still, by and large, expect the authorities to keep them safe. Or, if it turns out they’re not safe and their homes are flooded and damaged, they expect the government to urgently assist in “fixing it”.

As someone who actually does the environmental cleanup after floods and other major disasters, I know this expectation is wrong. It’s simply not how the system works. It isn’t the government who is going do the clean-up of properties, it’s the insurance companies. We all remember a certain prime minister a few years ago standing in his wellies in the floodwater, saying the government would do everything it could. But when it comes down to it, it’s the insurance companies who will actually be paying for and actioning the clean-up.

There’s a hidden aspect to this week’s ongoing flooding disaster which isn’t being properly discussed, even by the insurance companies. The floods are widely regarded as a harbinger of accelerating climate change, but nobody is properly discussing how the floods themselves are damaging our environment by leaking oil, other fossil fuels, and chemicals into the ground, into the fields we grow our crops in, into our drinking water supply and into the vulnerable bodies of our wildlife.

The pile of available sandbags symbolises what most people think they need to do in a flood: stop the water. And after the flood, insurers and government alike focus on remediating the damage from water and sewage. People are told they’ll be “back in their houses within six months”, but if oil leaks from their property heating systems, this is simply unlikely to be true. Oil and other pollution is the hidden risk of floods.

In the rural towns of Worcestershire, and in other rural communities, many properties have old oil-based heating tanks, diesel tanks, slurry tanks and fertiliser and pesticide storage which can leak when impacted by flooding. These storage systems are more at risk from the extreme weather we have been experiencing. And in more urban areas, businesses which store oil, fuels and chemicals – small commercial sites like garages and larger properties which have diesel fuelled back-up generators, and recycling yards, which have a raft of problems relating to potential contamination – can leak oil and other pollutants if flooded.

Oil damage to the environment is much more costly than water damage, and it’s not properly on anybody’s radar, including some insurers and their flood restoration units. Both domestic and commercial properties are often woefully under-insured for oil contamination impact. And some types of clean-up from contamination to groundwater will be so costly that few insurers will cover it.

An oil leak doesn’t just damage the property where it comes from. It gets into the groundwater and can contaminate both neighbouring properties, even those surprisingly far away from the leak, including drinking water supplies. It takes only a small amount of oil to contaminate a large area of land and get into drinking water.

The worst case scenario is that an oil leak contaminates one of the boreholes that are the main source of water in the UK. More than 30 per cent of drinking water in the UK comes not from reservoirs but from the ground, via boreholes that can be shallow or drilled more than 100m deep to access water that is safe and clean. If oil contaminates a borehole, it could cost millions to clean up. When it comes to typical levels of domestic and commercial insurance, the insurer will unlikely pay up for clean-up of contamination of a borehole.

This may all appear alarmist, but we have already experienced such events.

At the moment, everybody who deals with floods is thinking of the immediate risks and hazards posed by water. When the floods hit a house, the focus is on what can be salvaged, not on what might be leaking into the ground.

We need better awareness at a national level of the environmental risks posed by flooding of any properties and sites where oil and other liquids are stored. Given that the climate crisis is the big powder keg of the next decade and beyond, and that extreme weather events are only going to increase, stopping groundwater contamination from any source should be a national priority. This is particularly important because the EA and local authorities, which are ultimately responsible for ensuring the clean-up is undertaken, simply don’t have the funds to get rid of all the pollution caused by private and commercial properties that are under-insured. And with limited financial resources themselves, the people these floods have affected have few options left.

Neil Stothert is managing director of environmental clean-up specialist RSK Raw