QUOTE (blackdog @ Jul 29 2010, 04:05 PM)
I doubt that it will create many extra flooding problems, the concrete is filling up relatively little space.
The North Brook ran (and may well still run) down the west side of Northbrook St, not through the Parkway site. There was another brook down the east side of the Park, where the A339 is today. I don't know if either were culverted, but they may well have been.
Both streams still exist (you can't just get rid of them!) but both now run underground.
The water table in the area surrounding the river Kennet is very high and will always remain so. Yo cannot pump it all away and I would imagine that the amount being pumped from the Parkway site is small compared with the total amount of water in the table.
The land under the area surrounding the river Kennet in Newbury I think is mainly gravel and the water that is being pumped away from the site is probably just seeping back through this gravel from the river.
A continuous circle really.
I remember as a lad when they were building the now infamous BT tower (telephone exchange) in the late 60's that they had to employ a specialist (I think) French firm to pump away the water so they could lay the foundations.
I remember it was quite revolutionary process at the time but is now probably a routine procedure.
Edit. On further research it appears that the original 1969 building had to have a specialist firm in because the water could not be pumped away fast enough.
They used a technique where the pumped concrete into the water logged foundations and then, when it had set, they cut the basement out of this concrete raft.
It was the later 1975 extension that used a pumped water process to lay the foundations.