Investing in Hull
June 2007 was one of the wettest months ever recorded in Yorkshire, resulting in widespread flooding in the city of Hull and in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Hull is unique amongst English cities because parts of the city are below sea-level when there is high tide and the plain around it is higher. This means that water from the Wolds tends to drain down towards the city.
It's really important that there's a good, well maintained drainage system in the city. We look after the sewers that take waste water from your home - these sewers also carry of lot of water from the highways, drains and gulleys.
Usually this water goes to our treatment works in Saltend but when there is a lot of rain, we can also use two big pumping stations to get the water out of the city and into the Humber. Until very recently, we hardly ever used these pumping stations, known as West Hull and East Hull, but we're the last couple of years we're using them more and more often.
What we're doing
The rainfall was extreme - we measured about a month's rainfall in just one day, but our experience tells us that we need to be prepared for more days when there will be very heavy rainfall.
That's why we're upgrading and improving our pumping stations in Hull by:
Installing new pumps
We're installing new pumps, which are easier to operate. We're also going to increase the amount of water that the stations can pump to give us more flexibility so that we can use the pumps to deal better with different levels of rainfall. 
We've ordered new pumps to replace all of the pumps at West Hull Pumping Station. These are hand made and they take a long time to assemble. We plan to begin installing these new pumps soon and have them replaced by December 2009.
At East Hull, we also plan to replace all of the pumps. We operate some of the pumps at East Hull for the Environment Agency - this side of the pumping station pumps the water from the Holderness Drain into the Humber. We're going to open channels at East Hull so we can increase the amount of water we can get into the station here too.
Improving our existing pumps
In the meantime, we've refurbished all the existing pumps and, by doing this, we've already increased the amount of water that the station can pump into the River Humber. We're also going to open some channels so that we can increase the amount of water that can get into the station.
Flood proofing Bransholme pumping station
Our pumping station at Bransholme stopped working last summer when it was flooded. We have spent the time since then working hard to ensure that the pumping station is more flood-proof - we want to ensure it will carry on working even if there is more flooding.
Working with Kingswood Developments
We're working closely with Kingswood Developments so that together we can plan for the future. There's a lot of building happening in this part of the city and it's important that we ensure that we can cope with these new changed demands. We'll share our plans about this later in the summer.
Read our report assessing the the performance of our assests in Hull (579 kb)
