Flooding exercise at Rother Valley Country Park

The six pumps were bought in 2008 — after the floods of June 2007 — to offer protection to Rotherham during times of heavy/prolonged rainfall.

The cost of around £106,000 was jointly funded by Rotherham Council and the Environment Agency and the pumps can be deployed to any area of the borough thought to be at risk of flooding.

Each pump delivers approximately 1,000 gallons per minute — equivalent to around 75 litres of water per second.

If all six pumps were running at the same time they would empty an Olympic size swimming pool (50m long x 25m wide x 2m deep) in about 90 minutes.