Watercourses:- every landowners responsibility.
Many residents may not be aware of their personal responsibilities to maintain watercourses in the village. In January 2021 several areas of the village were flooded and homes, roads and land affected. Hopefully by all working together we can help prevent this happening again.
Barrow has several brooks namely Barrow Brook, Milton Brook, Salters Brook and Back Brook. These brooks then take water from the area, fed from our ditches, watercourses and run offs from the fields out to the River Gowy. This ultimately passes through a siphon under the Manchester ship canal out into the River Mersey. There is a flood monitoring station at Bridge Trafford and the Gowy can be “held back” to enable it to flood over its flood plain.
The following information has been obtained from Bedford and Worcestershire councils who provide a leaflet online. These all seem to have been based on the information from the government site that you can access here:- https://www.gov.uk/guidance/owning-a-watercourse
What is a watercourse?
A watercourse is every river, stream, ditch, drain, cut, dyke, sluice, rill, sewer (other than a public sewer) culvert, pipe or passage through which water flows. A watercourse may be very small and need not always contain water all year round, nor do the banks need to be clearly or sharply defined.
Posted 10th October 2021