Flooding: The Welsh street where there is a 'risk to life' and locals live in fear
Residents on a street with ‘risk to life’ still have no solutions to heavy flooding - four years after Storm Dennis hit.
Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl, Pontypridd, was badly hit in February 2020 when the River Taff burst its banks and quickly flooded homes.
Paul Thomas, who has called the road home for more than 40 years, describes the moment disaster struck.
He told ITV’s Sharp End: “It was horrendous. On the night that it happened I spent an hour plus trying to stop the water coming into my property.”
Paul’s disabled daughter lives next door and was hit by the floodwater first. A fountain of water taller than him was coming out of the toilet.
He said: “I tried to ram towels into the toilet to stop it. Then I had to make the hardest decision I’ve had to make in a long time and say to my daughter, ‘get upstairs - you’re on your own, I’ve got to try and stop it coming into my house’. I had to leave her with that and that was hard to deal with.”
Despite his best efforts, Paul’s home flooded almost up to ceiling height. His family’s belongings were destroyed.
The Thomas’ have since renovated their home - but they still live in fear of flooding every time it rains.
Mr Thomas said: “I’ve lived here 40 years, my children were all been born here.
“But living here is very hard; when winter time comes it’s an unbelievable feeling that we get.
“Every time it rains you’re thinking ‘is it going to happen tonight’, you move your stuff upstairs. My furniture has been up and down the stairs more times than a sale in DFS.
“It’s unreal to live here. We’ve got a Facebook page and you can sense the mood. Some people get really upset when it rains, or if there’s heavy rain forecast.
“We’ve got weather alerts - they’re nice - but they don’t do anything for us but raise our anxiety to a tremendous level.”
The authorities are drawing up a list of options of what to do but that could take until the end of the decade.
“One option is to build a wall which would reduce the carriageway so it would be single file traffic and no more parking in the street,” Mr Thomas said.
“If you've got a three metre wall outside your house that's going to devalue it even more.
“Another option they're considering is to take the top off the tunnel culvert at the bottom of the street - that won't do any good because if you take the top off you've still got the width. And the third option is to buy the street out and condemn the street.”
Clydach Terrace lies on the natural floodplain in a very constrained section of the valley and has historically suffered from severe flooding.
Natural Resources Wales (NRW) says the community has a unique flood risk due to its position. When it floods, it does so quickly and to a great depth, which means there is a risk to life.
There are currently no flood defences in Ynysybwl, although NRW says it carries out regular maintenance work to manage the flood risk. NRW removed more than 700 tonnes of river shoal material from the river channel adjacent to Clydach Terrace since 2020.
The Welsh Government has instructed Natural Resources Wales to undertake a full Business Case process to manage the risks for residents in Clydach Terrace - which will conclude in 2029.
Why do residents have to wait until the end of the decade?
Clare Pillman, NRW's Chief Executive, said: "These things are complex. Flooding is something that, increasingly, we're learning to live with and, as we saw during Storm Dennis, particularly in these short, flashy catchments the rivers rise very quickly, the flood plain has been built on and there is nowhere easy for the water to go.
"What we don't want to do is build something that will work for one community's challenges but puts another community at greater risk."
You can see more in-depth coverage of flooding on Tuesday's Sharp End (March 12). Catch up with the latest episodes here.
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