So I watch the news, and just have a general sympathy that flooding is crap.
But, they chose to buy a house on low lying (below sea level), artificially drained land.
The old farms and pubs are all teetering just above water on small rises. The farms are so fertile due to ancient flood deposits.
Choices we make in life IMO , so quit asking for rivers to be dredged and suggesting that EA and govt / council are to blame.

what about people who are only protected by the thames barrier?

or a large part of east anglia?

Hmmmm

I agree. My probably ill informed view is that record amount of sustained rainfall is to blame rather than a failure to dredge the streams.

Having once seen a Barrats coming soon board under 4ft of water building on flood plains is a bad plan but people will do it.

shortbread_fanylion – Member
I agree. My probably ill informed view is that record amount of sustained rainfall thoughtlessly pumping millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for the last century or so is to blame rather than a failure to dredge the streams.

What about people who’ve lived there for 20 years? Before they stopped dredging?

^ but the point being that many older houses are above water. The farms should suck up the floods, this is the mechanism that delivers the lovely soil.
20 years is not that long, not really.

(As you can tell, I am questioning my own views)

Flooding on the levels is not unusual.

Flooding for this long is.

The Dutch seem to have this sorted don’t they….?

We build more concrete and Tarmac and farm more intensively and rain hits the lowlands quicker.

We need more forests.

Community there for decades, Govt stops dredging in last few years, if you lived there, how would you feel?

if you lived there, how would you feel?

moist

pixxed off that my training was all to xxxx

Govt stops dredging in last few years,

You need to look into it. I did a bit of research and dredging alone simply will not fix the flooding. Basically, it’ll just transfer the problem elsewhere, if done in isolation, and make erosion worse.

Thames Barrier protects the economic heartland of the Country, it is money well spent. East Anglia hasn’t had the rain that Somerset has and probably won’t. But if a levee/sea wall fails, they will be in a world of hurt.
Would it be cheaper to relocate houses from areas liable to flood to the surrounding hills in the longer term, rather than throwing money at a never-ending problem. To me it appears there are far to many King Canutes around…

You could dredge all the rivers along with all the burns/streams you like but it would make very little difference to the amount of water able to be removed from saturated land, the rainfall we have had is unusual and unprecedented and if the rivers were dredged then we’d have to cope with water flowing at an increased rate which would bring it’s own problems. All according to friend who holds a high position in the BHS.

EDIT – build houses on concrete pilings – sorted!.

So I watch the news, and just have a general sympathy that flooding is crap.
But, they chose to buy a house on low lying (below sea level), artificially drained land.
The old farms and pubs are all teetering just above water on small rises. The farms are so fertile due to ancient flood deposits.
Choices we make in life IMO , so quit asking for rivers to be dredged and suggesting that EA and govt / council are to blame.

I come from here, all pretty much below high-tide and dates back to the 19th century.

http://binged.it/1kncVoN

Basically, it’ll just transfer the problem elsewhere

Perhaps to the sea?

I think the point being made by the man on R4 was that with dredging there would still have been floods but they would have drained away after a few days, rather than still being there weeks later.

But won’t the fields be super fertile now ? Save money on (greenhouse gas producing) fertiliser ?

There was an interesting point of view about flood defences that I’d not heard before in the Guardian a few weeks back:

Drowning in money: the untold story of the crazy public spending that makes flooding inevitable

so, we support UKIP ? noooooooo

Build all new houses in flood potential areas on stilts.
Save any future grief.

^ now that Guardian piece makes sense. And puts a different take on things.

There is a lot going on here. It’s rained a lot so it’s not surprising it’s flooded but I think there will be some bigger issues behind it coming to the fore.

The environment agency are good at regulation but are they right for capital delivery?

The framework for managing the environment is fragmented in England, is it likely to see a move to natural resource wales model?

Uk investors like cki are going to need new revenue streams ( no pun) and are well hacked off with the regulation of the uk utility sector and taking this government – who can’t afford the investment needed.

I wonder that there might be quite a change in the sector over the next ten years. Reverting back to a catchment water board one might say from 1974. There are quite a few people moving this way. Can’t happen fast enough I reckon.

My m[s]h[/s]arsh attitude about these Somerset floods

FTFY 🙂

Whilst I have every sympathy for the villages around the Somerset levels, watching somme of the interviews it did feel like the residents were blaming the govt for the recent inclement weather.

Anyway, this is quite a good article considering it’s the Guardian george monbiot

I live on the (albeit rising) edge of a flood plain – it came close 11 years ago in our old house – we were saved by the slightly elevated (now steam only) railway 50yds away.

The new development we are now living in a few hundred yards from the old house should hopefully be ok, should it get that bad again, as the developers had the foresight to build the whole area up by a couple of feet on a clay raft. Downside, the drainage in our garden is rubbish.

I live n Somerset, albeit 700ft above sea level, and my initial thoughts were ‘let m swim’ but then I’d like the roads cleared if it snows, tree cleared after high winds so why shouldn’t the webbed feet low landers have some kind of help? Dredging may not be the answer, but what none of the ea spokesman have said is what would have helped ( not prevented) the flooding as opposed to saying that dredging isn’t the answer. I will say that in other areas dredging rivers has helped, especially effectively artificial ones that go through an old swap.
Oh, and it’s pissing down again, it’s going to get worse before it gets better!

As I said in the other thread, people here live with a bit of regular flooding. What is happening now is very unusual and anomalous.

Tell the Netherlands to return their country to the North Sea and see what reaction you get.

Apologies – just realised I posted to an article previously linked

I live n Somerset, albeit 700ft above sea level, and my initial thoughts were ‘let m swim’

I live in Somerset too and the people in that area should be able to cope, this is the reason they have webbed feet 😉

The rivers are silted up round here and it might not have been quite so bad if they’d been dredged now and again but i think the fact that its rained constantly since December might have a bit to do with it!

Build on stilts. These ones have been, to allow the sea to flow underneath during bad weather…

One of my work mates lives alongside an estuary/river which hasnt been dredged for about 20 years. The area used to run a ferry between some of the villages but this is no longer possible due to tbe depth of the river. When you look at the reasons for no dredging one group is always around, the environmentalists stopping or scaling down any work due to a few plants and bugs

The problem is though is that historically a lot of these low lying lands were managed and people lived there quite happily and quite dry for hundreds of years (this weather is not as unusual as the media would have us believe). The problem is that the land management policies have recently changed and the land was is no longer managed. So living in Somerset is different to buying a new build that is built on a flood plane.

The Dutch seem to manage ok.

Dredging would have increased run off and velocity by an amount far far less than the volume of floodwater. Look at the size of the channel vs the area flooded. Do people seriously believe that an extra metre or even two in channel depth could have moved that much water?

Doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for individuals suffering the effects of flooding.

more trees everywhere its got to be a win win for everyone
locking in CO2 and water more forests to ride walk in more firewood for the log burners

The more trees theory was covered in last weeks Countryfile, there’s a pilot scheme running which was presented as working.

Somerset is not some new build estate built on a flood plane. History tells us by dredging and managing the land makes a difference. The channels are silted up such that their capacity has been reduced by 60%. Also the dredging spoil was used to build up the banks to increase the waterways capacity. How else is the flood water to run away other than the main waterways. Dredged rivers may not have totally prevented, flooding but they would gave dealt with the flood water much much better instead of locking it onto the land with nowhere to go. People have been living there and managing the land for hundreds of years through weather as bad or even worse than this, until recently. If you live below sea level you’ve got to manage the land, the Dutch know all about that.