A businessman who lost £200,000 of stock in flash floods believes a major stormwater containment project now underway will do nothing to help units at Hills Meadow.

KC Foods was left under 2ft of water and mud following the December 2015 floods.

Construction work has begun at the Old Noble’s Hospital car park to install an underground stormwater storage tank to help manage flood flows from the Ballakermeen Road catchment.

The Manx Utilities scheme, which is expected to be completed in May this year, aims to reduce the flooding experienced on Peel Road and the Hills Meadow industrial estate.

But KC Foods managing director Peter Cain believes it will make little difference.

He said of the December 3, 2015, flooding: ’It’s definitely something you never forget.

’It’s something I would not want to go through again. But it’s going to happen again unless they take a long hard look at the river all the way down from the Baldwin reservoir.’

He said: ’The tank is a bit of a red herring. It will have minimal impact. Water does come down the Cinder Path from Ballakermeen Road.

’It will save it going down in a deluge and overloading the drains on Peel Road which until they did the roadworks had never previously been under threat.

’But I don’t think this is going to help the Meadow one iota. What happened that evening was a freak but it could have been handled better.’

Mr Cain said disaster might have been averted if water had been let out of Injebreck reservoir and branches had been fished out of the river downstream.

Debris in the river had caused Pulrose Bridge to be blocked. Floodwater filled the Bowl and then came over the road and down into the Riverside Trading Estate and then Hills Meadow beyond.

Mr Cain recalls that night. He said: ’At 4.30pm that day I got a call from one of the lads saying I had better get down there. The water across the whole of Hills Meadow at the Douglas end was rising in front of our eyes. If high tide had been 20 minutes later it would have gone into downtown Douglas like a train.

’The warehouse was in excess of 2ft deep in mud and slime and in places slightly deeper.’

A lot of stock that was not directly affected by the floodwater was unsaleable because of the damp conditions, he said. Four fork lift trucks were destroyed as well as £200,000 of stock. The total insurance claim was £300,000.

Some £20,000 has been spent on metre-high flood barriers all around the warehouse.

Mr Cain, who has been based at Hills Meadow since 1975, said: ’It rained for as much as four hours every day for three months, except for five days when it was dry. I’ve ridden the hills all my life and even the heathland was like a sponge.

’I despair at times. The main problem is that drains serving Pulrose and Spring Valley are now covering the whole of Saddlestone, Anagh Coar, Farmhill and everything above that.’

He said there had been talk of re-routing the surface water draining from Quarterbridge direct to Meary Veg. Mr Cain believes Douglas marina has also created problems by slowing the flow of the river.

Manx Utilities is also carrying out a feasbility study on flood risk management for the streams that feed the main Douglas rivers.