WORK will be carried out by South Gloucestershire Council to tackle two flooding blackspots in Olveston and Alveston.

Concerns that sewage pumping stations at Alveston Sewage Treatment and The Common, Olveston, were overflowing were flagged by local pensioner Eric Garrett.

The 84-year-old from Haw Lane noticed ditches near the treatment stations weren’t draining properly due to a build up of silt and enlisted the help of Thornbury and Yate MP Steve Webb to bring it to the council’s attention.

Mr Garret said: “This has been an ongoing problem since the late 1990s. The treatment plants are not able to deal with the capacity and the ditches are not being cleaned out. They are silted up causing a back-up of water and sewage to spill out onto the road. It’s been a big problem in the past.”

Mr Webb said: “With terrible scenes of flooding on the news every evening, issues of drainage and water management are on everyone’s mind at the moment. Eric raised his concerns with me about some local areas needing attention. South Gloucestershire Council is now taking action which should provide additional peace of mind to local residents.”

The council has inspected both locations.

After visiting Alveston Sewage Treatment it announced that works would be carried out at to reduce the frequency of road flooding.

A spokesman said the road by Alveston Sewage Treatment required further drainage maintenance. The council will undertake a programme of works to clean gully pipes and re-grade the highway ditches at this location to tackle the problem.

Commenting on the sewage station at The Common, the council said: “The sewer flooding is a result of the pumping station overflow pipe being blocked.”

It said this was due to a damaged pipe being damaged which has since been repaired.

The council examined the ditch in the vicinity of the sewage pumping station at the bottom of Church Hill.

It found a build-up of silt was restricting surface water run-off via a culvert maintained by the Lower Severn Internal Drainage Board.

This ditch will be re-graded and the culvert cleaned out to enable water run-off from the road.

The council added: “It should be noted that during periods of extreme rainfall linked to high tides on the estuary, the extended tide will result in the Olveston rhine being submerged.

“We will continue to work with our flood risk management partner, the Lower Severn IDB, to manage the surface water flood risk on The Common.”