ENGINEERS are near completing a £1.8m project to clear waterways south of Oxford and help alleviate the risk of flooding in the city.

In November last year, the Environment Agency began a 15-week programme to remove silt and overgrown vegetation from the Seacourt and Bulstake Streams, off Botley Road, and as far south as Kennington.

Delayed by bad weather, the project — which followed months of talks with councils and residents’ groups in the aftermath of the floods in July 2007 — is due for completion next week, although the installation of new culverts to remove a pinch point in Hinksey Drain near the Old Abingdon Road will not be completed until the summer.

Environment Agency spokesman Keith Hutchence said tonnes of silt and vegetation had been sucked up and gathered from streams linked to the River Thames.

He said: “We have been making good headway — the work is very important and we have been getting on with it. We aimed to finish the project by the end of March, but it was so wet under foot we had to delay it by a few weeks after Christmas.

“Every day the water that falls on the Cotswolds, which doesn’t evaporate has to find its way through Oxford to Reading and, ultimately, out to the North Sea.

“We have been trying to make the rivers and streams run more efficiently to stop the build up of water which causes problems for West Oxford and North Hinksey.

“We have to get rid of the gunge and get the water moving.

“It’s been very good work indeed and we have had a lot of positive feedback from the public.

“People have been saying they haven’t seen the area look so good in years.”

Mr Hutchence said the short-term measures carried out south of the city were designed to complement the Environment Agency’s long-term multi-million-pound strategy to protect the city from flooding over the next 100 years.

The plans, which include spending up to £100m on a flood relief channel as wide as the River Thames, to run west of the city, are currently out to consultation — a 17-page document has been sent to more than 2,500 homes and businesses in the city.

Mr Hutchence said it was the biggest consultation on flood risk management ever undertaken in the city, which suffered serious flooding in 2000, 2003 and again in 2007.

He said: “We want to reduce the risk of flooding to people in their homes and businesses, but we’re not looking at a quick fix — we’re looking at flooding in Oxford over the next century.

“We have come up with options ranging from doing nothing to spending millions of pounds creating new watercourses and channels west of Oxford.”

To comment on the consultation document visit environment-agency.gov.uk/oxfordflood tshepherd@oxfordmail.co.uk