THIS is why we need good drainage

On a recent trip over east, one our Urbaqua staff members had a bit of a shock when trying to get to a cool Sydney inner west hipster restaurant – all of a sudden caught in the middle of a 1 in 10 year rain event descending over this rather old area of the big smoke (don’t forget that she was not used to proper, drenching rain, being from little ole Perth) .

This is what she had to walk through in order to get to the delicious comestibles and jars of wine she so desperately was hoping for:

The environmental engineer in question got the full brunt of a badly under-sized drainage system, practically losing her fancy sandles while walking through some calf-deep, and very fast moving stormwater, almost getting swept over in front of a car in the process. It was a light bulb moment: “THIS is why we need to design good drainage!”

As she excitedly expressed her amazement at the poor drainage to her rather bored but politely-interested looking Sydney friend, she then wondered….how on earth could the City of Sydney fix such a potentially dangerous problem? It would require significant space to detain all that stormwater somewhere before it presumably made its way to the harbour. It might even require local government to buy a block or three, tear down some buildings and install some underground storage cells (unless anyone has a better idea? Please add your comments/thoughts below!).

Being from Perth and with so many over-sized systems around us, it is rare that you even see water covering the whole surface of a road when it rains, nevertheless running over the footpath and into the doorway of a corner restaurant, thus requiring staff to use sandbags to block the gap of the front door.

This of course excludes The Great Perth Hail Storm of 2010, which no Perth resident could ever forget :

Let us know what you think could be done to solve Sydney’s inner west drainage issues here!

Happy Friday from Urbaqua!