School children tour Teesside flood defences

The Environment Agency hosted an event for school pupils and local residents to see the flood defences put in place in Teesside.

Pupils at High Clarence Primary School were shown around the state-of-the-art £4.5million flood defences at Port Clarence which reduce the risk of flooding from the River Tees.

They saw the £11million scheme, currently under construction, which reduces the risk of flooding from Greatham Creek and will create 30 hectares of new habitat for wildlife to thrive.

Pupils travelled on the Transporter Bridge across the River Tees to get a bird’s eye view of the flood defences, while at Greatham they got to see workers building new flood embankments.

The event also gave local residents the opportunity to find out more about the scheme, while MP Alex Cunningham was also given an insight into how the defences work to protect his constituency.

Phil Marshall, the Environment Agency’s Senior Advisor on the project, said: “Our future generations will play an important role in ensuring our communities are resilient as we deal with the impacts of climate change and it was great to show the school pupils this great engineering and habitat creation project. Hopefully it will inspire them to want to make a difference.”

The first phase of the project was completed in December 2015 and saw new flood defences built in Port Clarence, consisting of a mixture of earth embankments, flood walls, and a raised section of the road on the approach to the Transporter Bridge.

In addition, the Environment Agency worked together with local business Wilton Engineering to install removable steel flood defences along the River Tees. This improves flood protection while still allowing Wilton to operate from the river.

Work started on the second phase in summer 2017 and involves raising existing flood embankments along Greatham Creek.