How could I have doubted Sandwell's wisdom? How could I have doubted the combined wisdom of Sandwell and the Environment Agency?
Foolish. That's the only word to describe me.
When, 3 years ago, I questioned the sense of Sandwell creating another run-off from Swan Pool at Sandwell Valley, just a few hundred yards from one which had been there since time immemorial, I knew in my heart of hearts that Sandwell and the Environment Agency would one day be proved right.
And so it was.
Just last week.
The run-off, which had lain arid for so long, sprang into life with a virtual torrent of water gushing through it.
Actually, now I think about it, 'virtual' is perhaps the right word, as the flow was less of a spate and more of a trickle.
But that's not the point. Sandwell and the Environment Agency were proved absolutely right in spending the 30 or 40 thousand pounds on creating the new run-off because the old one was clearly struggling - although, on second thoughts, it didn't seem to be.
Water was going through it at a fair old lick, but it looked as though it had oodles of capacity left.
But it might not have. And that is exactly where the combined expertise and intelligence of Sandwell and the Environment agency really pays off and leaves us rank amateurs, who know nothing, standing.
Because, if the old one had not been able to cope with unusual rainfall, and if the new one had not been constructed, where would the excess water from Swan Pool have gone?
Would it have deluged into the nearby car park, and from there, out into Park Lane thereby interrupting the Sandwell/Birmingham traffic.
Nope. It wouldn't.
Why?
Because the distance from the pool surface to the pathway at the car park end of Swan Pool was about a foot, and the distance from the pool surface to the pathway at the opposite, run-off, end looked, at the path's lowest point, to be 9 or 10 inches.
So, instead of flooding one of the main arterial routes from Sandwell to Birmingham (I jest, of course) the water would have simply passed over the internal pathway; down the slight bank, and into the little stream that both the old and new run-offs flow into!
No problem.
So, although the new run-off does work, one is still bound to ask whether there was any real need for it, and the attendant expense, or whether it really was just something else, thought up to ensure the continued employment of managers, et al, at the two sponsoring organisations.
I know what I think.
. .
