Maintenance
Annual maintenance is essential to ensure the free flow of water. The Boards’ summer maintenance programme begins each July and focuses on removing vegetation from Board maintained watercourses. Environmental legislation prevents this work from starting before 15 July to avoid disturbing nesting sites. However, in years when early weed growth is increased and water levels are high, the Boards will carry out targeted clearance of the centre of the channel on watercourses that protect urban areas. This ensures that water continues to flow freely and that properties remain safeguarded.
During the summer months, water levels are generally maintained at a higher level to support the environment and assist with irrigation.
Reforming is carried out during the winter and involves re profiling the watercourse banks and removing silt from the bed to restore the watercourse to its original design storage capacity. Winter maintenance activities include reforming and desilting, replacing or cleaning culverts, undertaking slip repairs, carrying out tree and bushing works, improving access, and completing necessary construction works. In addition to planned tasks, unforeseen issues such as bank slips or culvert collapses are addressed swiftly as they arise to maintain the free flow of water throughout the Boards’ systems.All our work is undertaken in accordance with environmental regulations.
A preventative maintenance approach is applied by the Boards to all major assets to ensure their continued reliability. Despite these measures, unforeseen breakdowns can still occur; when they do, the Boards are able to respond quickly to restore systems to their normal level of service as soon as possible. To support this, CCTV inspections and de silting works are carried out on culverted watercourses to assess their condition and identify any maintenance or repair works required to return them to optimal operational performance.
Pumping Stations
Much of Lincolnshire is low-lying, so water levels must be controlled to reduce flood risk. Water from higher ground flows through lowland areas via main rivers, which in some areas also requires pumping during tide-locked conditions.Early drainage relied on wind-powered pumps, followed by steam engines in the 1800s, oil engines in the early 1900s, and electric motors from the 1950s to the present day.Pumping stations lift water either directly to the sea or into main rivers managed by the Environment Agency. IDBs pay a precept to the Environment Agency for managing this water. Lincolnshire has over 200 pumping stations operating or on standby year-round to control water levels. Most are monitored and controlled remotely via telemetry, allowing water levels to be adjusted and pre-emptive pumping carried out ahead of heavy rainfall.