[Closed] Flooding (and blame thereof)

Where I live I was told no flood defences as too few property at risk (a few dozen though). However just down the road there was a big costly flood defence scheme... exactly where the council intended building loads of flats (and have, plus are planning a huge amount more). Hmm.

This being river flooding, not coastal.

A few years ago there were some floods in Kent that made the news.

Mother in laws neighbour had been brought up in one of the houses that was in the news, and simply said "Every winter we moved most of the furniture upstairs as it flooded every year"

Defences had been put in, no floods for years/decades, houses changed hands, memories faded. Freak weather - maybe natural, maybe global warming - and all hell breaks lose when the defences failed and "someone" is to blame.

Flooding is awful - been on the ground in flood areas when I did insurance claims - but wider society cannot afford to put in defences to protect some of these places. Wider society's money might be better spent either moving people elsewhere, or setting up a central flood insurance scheme.

Just you wait till the Thames Barrier fails. Maybe not soon, but it will happen

If it's flooding from rain/rivers from higher ground, flood defences are just treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

It's barren high moorland that's the problem, the water runs straight off and causes problems lower down.

What needs to happen is to plant vast amounts of trees (which also have other benefits).

That said, there's not a right lot the environment agency can do if its not public land.

And stop burning heather

Very difficult, but I took the view a couple of years ago to move from an at risk area to a much lower risk area (top of a hill). I was lucky to be able to afford to do so. Things have changed in the past relatively short term that some people can’t guard against. Moorland replanting would help in some areas.

Why would the Thames barrier fail? As I understand it it has triple redundancy - two back up processes? It’s operational life is expected to end around 2070 now (originally 2023) isostatic rebound/ sea level rise hasn’t accelerated as feared when it was designed in the 60s.

The EA are a bunch of cockwombles though.

Modern textbook thinking and technology rather than learnt wisdom seems to be the modus operandi in and around the Norfolk Broads.

It’s getting tedious quite frankly but they don’t appear to want to learn.

Very difficult, but I took the view a couple of years ago to move from an at risk area to a much lower risk area (top of a hill). I was lucky to be able to afford to do so.

We bought a significantly smaller /more expensive house than we were otherwise presented with had we been willing to buy near flooding..... Every time we looked they told us *no we have not flooded* .... Watching these houses since....yep sure they have flooded.

When presented with that it's easy to see how folk are tempted. (Obviously talking about home owners rather than renters)

Used to flood in Skipton quiet often but then they made some defences a few years back that seem to have done the trick.

Can you believe it is not a statutory part of the Fire Service's job to respond to flooding even though we are the first people the public ring? As it's not 'part of our job' the Government does not fund us for it.

Well, can you enlighten me what part of the EA are cockwombles slackalice? Or is it the whole of the EA. You do also know there are several departments to the EA?

Having lived in the tropics for 30 years where we get monsoonal rain, I amazed at how little rain it takes to cause flooding in the country.

My mate works for the EA, he can be a cockwomble at times though

Are cock wombles to be found on Wimbledon Common collecting soiled & discarded condoms 🤔

.

No, I can’t tell you the departments within the EA who are cockwombles.

At a guess, they’ll be the ones who oversee river flows, levels, drainage and dare I say: ‘river management’. Also the separate department who look at tide times, ranges and how these might be affected by weather.

Neither of these two departments regard it necessary to talk to or share information with each other. In fact, the former ‘department’ appear to have sub departments, according to ‘higher’, ‘middle’ and ‘lower’ reaches of rivers. These sub departments also consider it unnecessary to communicate in any shape or form with any other part of the EA, or in fact the Broads Authority (who, like the EA, are an unelected quasi local government faction).

This organisation wide existence of splendid isolation and point blank refusal to look out of the window, or heaven forbid, go and have a paddle in the foot deep water where it’s meant to be a road, or go and see how remarkably muddy the bottom of the river is now that there is now water left in it, is truly breathtaking in its arrogance that the computer says no, so therefore the real world answer is, no.

Cockwombles. Utter cockwombles.

Edit. Orinoco isn’t a cockwomble. He was my favourite 🤗

Actually, I’ve started, so I’m going to carry on.

For hundreds and hundreds of years, the flat and boggy part of Norfolk and the Fens were managed very successfully by the people who needed to survive in it. They learned that to do so required efficient effort, mainly because they were too busy trying to keep themselves alive.

No electricity, no heavy machinery, no hydraulic rams, just hands and basic shovels and spades, which meant that they built dwellings where it didn’t flood. It also meant that they created drainage systems or dykes and... guess what? They maintained them, they kept them at a sufficient depth so that excess rain or tidal water was absorbed by the extra capacity. They had learnt wisdom.

Wisdom is applied knowledge.

Our forebears needed wisdom to stay alive and procreate. With the state of humanity now, it begs the question whether our forebears really needed to bother.

Nowadays, no one wants to take responsibility for the dykes that served the marsh lands so well for well over a thousand years. It costs money to maintain them. Local councils don’t want to know. Private land owners certainly don’t want to know. Farmers... well let’s just say that the farmers don’t want to know. The EA, they don’t see it’s worthwhile to clear the dykes, because they can control sluice gates with one person on a computer.

Except they don’t.

I’m getting bored of this. Hopefully you get my point. If any of you know any high ranking cockwombles in the Norfolk division, please, send them over. Thank you.

So some of the FCRM teams were out the other night shutting flood gates and monitoring the high tides and erecting flood barriers which were expected to be higher due to the high winds but I guess they read that on a fortune cookie.

And since September the rain has been relentless with some areas still dealing with all the rainfall that fell and the forthcoming storm Dennis is presenting further problems due to already high water tables and river levels. Teams are on 24hr standby and a lot will be out over the weekend clearing trash screens, culverts, bridge holes and still dealing with windblown trees from the last storm. Some of the teams, over the past few months, were working 8-hour shifts 24/7 for weeks at a time dealing with flooding even with some volunteering to work in other areas to help out on mutual aid.

As for sluice gates being controlled by someone on sitting at a computer that's the first I've ever heard of it.

And hundreds and hundreds of years ago I'm pretty sure you didn't have the large towns. city's, villages and all the infrastructure that goes with that add to the problem.

But I guess its piss easy to sit there and be a keyboard warrior. As you say I'm bored with it especially with someone as ignorant as you.

In the fens draining them and erosion has lowered the land significantly in many places making flooding more likely

Give yourself a break @kuco!

Read my post before coming over all sanctimonious please. As for my ignorance on the matter, I’ll let that one slide.

The drainage dykes that have served the area very well for well over a thousand years have been neglected for the last 35 years. Which is why people are out at midnight clearing the blocked culverts and putting up barriers.

Because no one wanted to foot the bill or continue paying for something that didn’t appear to be an issue because they were regularly maintained and kept in good working order.

The relatively new agencies do not see it necessary to reinstate the dykes, rather they use automatic water level monitoring stations that activate sluice gates in perfect isolation to each other and okay, there are no people involved in that process, which makes it even more dangerous. River Bure I’ll cite as an example. Please go check where the monitoring stations are, where the automatic sluices are and how these are linked to high and low water times at Gorleston. And when you do finds that last bit, ffs let someone in the EA know, because they can’t find it.

And EA have stuck loot boxes and micro transactions into their games. Would have thought the profits off John Maddens over the years would have meant that they could have avoided cuts to some of the other departments 🙂

I hope those smugly saying they chose to spend more money to buy a home away from flood risk remember that many people can’t afford to make such choices and rent what they can. Also flood defences and alleviation works are to protect utilities, transport infrastructure, schools etc, not just homes.

Think I read on here a few years ago when this subject came up was that land owners/farmers/agricultural policies have a lot to answer for.
Maximising land by altering meandering rivers to a more direct course and removing loads of trees?

One of the biggest problems we have is there isn't a direct link between a Local Authority giving planning permission, the developer constructing a development, the owner who gets flooded and the insurance company who pays up (if the pay, but that's a different matter). Until the loop is formed there will continue to be issues. That said, a lot of insurance companies are very much upping their game when it comes to climate change risk and flooding, but until they all take a united stand then developments without sufficient resilience will keep being built.

Also flood defences and alleviation works are to protect utilities, transport infrastructure, schools etc, not just homes.

This. A far more holistic approach needs to be taken to resilience. It's no good having a home protected from flooding but you're trapped in it because all your transport links have been cut-off. Likewise it's great to have resilient public transport but if everywhere it takes you too is flooded then it doesn't help.

I doubt the loop will ever be formed, too much personal and corporate greed involved.

Cite one example from the late 90’s in a village called Farringdon on the A32 just south of Alton in Hampshire. Property developer obtained planning permission to build a number of new houses in the village, with a proportion of them classed as ‘low cost social housing’ to swing the deal. Except, where those were to be built, the older people in the village said wouldn’t work because in times of heavy rainfall, that empty part of the village, just by the main road that runs through it, became a pond.

These people were laughed at at the planning meeting.

Suffice to say in the winter of 2000, when it rained much more than the ‘relentless’ rain we’ve endured thus far this winter, a waterbourne formed and ran alongside and then on the A32, effectively closing the road for around 10 weeks. Because the deep ditches that were running beside the road had filled up with vegetation and detritus because the Drey men were no longer an expense Hampshire County Council wanted to pay.

This river, flowed very neatly all along the A32 and came to rest in the now occupied with housing association homes bit in the centre of the village. The water level got to the height of the ground floor windows.

The houses were subsequently demolished and the area is once again an empty village green.

Wisdom - applied knowledge. Works much better than the arrogance of youth.

Think I read on here a few years ago when this subject came up was that land owners/farmers/agricultural policies have a lot to answer for.

Indeed. Landowners were quick to blame a lack of dredging for flooding on the Somerset Levels: the real reason land management practices. Easier to point a finger at the EA though.

We have a new housing estate built 2yrs ago at the bottom of the village next to the river. It was built to be protected by a big flood defense which looks like it’s going to be topped this weekend. I wonder who will blame who if the houses flood.

Easier to point a finger at the EA though.

Errr... yes..

The stated purpose of the Environment Agency is: “to protect or enhance the environment, taken as a whole” so as to promote “the objective of achieving sustainable development”. This protection includes threats such as pollution and flooding.

Errr… yes..

It takes a special effort to miss the point so spectacularly. Well done you.

Thank you. I’m not sure I did but you crack on with you 🤗

Thank you. I’m not sure I did but you crack on with you 🤗

You're welcome. And thanks for your little diatribes - they've been a most entertaining fiction.

In which case, I have fulfilled my density 😉

Although I doubt if you’re aware of the Broads Internal Drainage Board (who are part of the WLMA - the Water Management Alliance) their remit of responsibility along with the EA, whose remit is for the main rivers and coastal defences. There is also the Broads Authority.

So, we have 3 agencies, unfortunately because in the region it is the EA who are responsible for the main rivers, which ultimately carry the volume to the North Sea, it matters little what the other two do if the volume flow is being constantly interrupted and messed about with so the volume isn’t able to go anywhere.

Work of fiction? Hmmmm. Check your facts buddy.

Unfortunately the blame for flooding in places like Hebden sits with humans, geography, and the weather.

It’s always convenient to have someone to blame though.

No, I can’t tell you the departments within the EA

And yet you know what they talk about and how they share info?

Neither of these two departments regard it necessary to talk to or share information with each other.

Yep you've convinced me.

Yep you’ve convinced me.

Awesome 🤗

Work of fiction? Hmmmm. Check your facts buddy.

It was pretty obvious that you wouldn't be able to leave it alone.

For the record, I've twenty years' experience of working with the Environment Agency on environmental permits, waste, pollution control,dredging, water quality, and flood defences. So I have a pretty good idea of their strengths and weaknesses, and to know when someone is talking out of their fundament.

Ahhhh... so do those credentials make you a....? 😉

Come on now keep it amicable 😉.
The broads are an interesting area geographically. Large swathes of low lying land, with relatively low population density. There was an article a few years back by the then head of the EA in consultation with Natural England suggesting the broads would be largely lost to the sea. Does make you wonder just how much effort/resources they put towards protecting the area. I can totally understand Slackalice’s frustration, but as per the op would it not be better to be open with the public that managed retreat is the only option?

hope those smugly saying they chose to spend more money to buy a home away from flood risk remember that many people can’t afford to make such choices and rent what they can.

You mean me and ots who both acknowledged we were lucky to have the choice.

Locally they are continuing to build on flood plains. The folk that bought the houses are demanding defenses and the rest of us are sitting saying -i remember when that were all fields.....it flooded 2-3 times a year then too...

But as I said when presented with a cheaper option to buy a bigger house is easy to see why folk are tempted. After all it's only a 1 in 100 year event *

* I'm aware that's not how the nomenclature works but thanks to the mass media --its been largely accepted as the meaning by most of the public so they are left believing that conditions have dramatically changed.

At what point does it become the fault of the property owner for not adapting their home. It’s not like you can’t get loads of flood defences for houses now. Why should it be the local councils or environment agencies job to sort your flooding issue out? Posing the question

Where I live I was told no flood defences as too few property at risk (a few dozen though). However just down the road there was a big costly flood defence scheme… exactly where the council intended building loads of flats (and have, plus are planning a huge amount more). Hmm.

Send me the location and I’ll tell you the facts if you’re genuinely interested. I won’t spin it.

I can tell you that the EA or any other risk management authority cannot claim a single penny of central government funding to protect a property from flooding was constructed post 2012. They have to be deleted from the economic case.

Some local authorities shore up funding through local enterprise funding (South East Local Enterprise Partnership for example). This has to be linked to economic development. This is how things like cycle paths and train platform extensions for golf tournaments get funded (both genuine recent examples).

I’ve worked in Flood risk management for a while, not every decision is perfect but it’s very very rarely the ‘reason you hear in the pub’ why things are done or not done.

At what point does it become the fault of the property owner for not adapting their home. It’s not like you can’t get loads of flood defences for houses now. Why should it be the local councils or environment agencies job to sort your flooding issue out? Posing the quest

The EA’s powers are permissive, they are not bound by statute to protect any individual. Technically it always has and always will be (unless the various acts are changed) the individual’s responsibility.

I’m sure the ea are as frustrated as those on here regarding land management practice (that they don’t control) and development on floodplains etc. They’re the poor souls who have to go stick a plaster on when it goes wrong then get the blame. Regarding clearing ditches etc it’s usually the landowners who are required to keep their ditches clear etc. Many don’t as they don’t have the manpower going spare that they had in the 60s.

Also, straightened rivers that are disconnected from their floodplains send water downstream faster and erode quicker exacerbating the problem. Same as smoothed out floodplains and land up in watersheds. It’s not the EA, we’ve all bu##ered it up.

When I say “we” I mean farmers and developers. (I’m neither).

For the record, I’ve twenty years’ experience of working with the Environment Agency

20+ plus years myself, know every gauging station, sluice in my area. And not all sluices run on telemetry and lot are still on manual operation. And nearly every one of them has been open since September trying to get rid of floodwater.

And for your information, Slackalice landowners have a lot of responsibility of watercourses.
Owning a watercourse

EA have an impossible job, with little control over the main factors, no one notices when it works, want heads on spikes when it doesn't.

And it's that sort of blame seeking attitude that is the biggest problem

I'd be the first to admit the EA is not perfect, far from it.

The majority of people are doing their best, especially op's field teams who are out there in the shitty weather night and day getting no praise for their hard effort and often overshadowed by the fire brigade or the army turning up.

Stupid question time.....I appreciate it might not even assist by 1% but why don't the 'authorities' drastically lower reservoir water levels when heavy rain is pretty much certain?
Around Hebden Bridge are several moorland reservoirs with their respective catchment areas.

According to kuco's post above, they have.

Dave, because they supply water for drinking etc. Mini reservoirs have been put in place though, Todmorden park has a river down the side and sluice gates at either end, the park is bunded. They can open the top gates at peak times and divert some of the flow into the park storing it until river levels drop and it can be released slowly. Flooding causes vary, in Calderdale it's not building on flood plains, it's the speed the water comes down off the hills. The town's have flooded for years, my neighbours left Tod 20 years ago due to the flooding. Realistically were are going to have to retreat from the river basin, trouble is many of the Victorian town centres run a long the rivers. It was interesting driving through Padiham this week, it flooded in 2015, some shops had invested in flood defences, others relied on shopping bags filled with sand. People in the flood prone areas do need to take some responsibility. Stupid thing is the insurance companies won't pay a little extra for flood proofing when they pay out a claim, would save them a lot in the long run.

The flood defences they built round here are basically reservoirs that only fill when flow levels significantly increase. Quite impressive to see when they are in operation tbh.

I’m sure many flood defences are worth having but is it really worth a multi million ££ investment to stop the flooding of half a dozen properties!?

No, it is worth it to protect thousands of homes, business and infrastructure for that area though.

Calderdale it’s not building on flood plains, it’s the speed the water comes down off the hills.

We need more beaver!!

@dave661350
Yorkshire water began drawing down the reservoir capacity above the hebden water this January. Took four years of discussion and planning, in part I assume because the catchment dynamics are complex and it needs a bit of thought, in part perhaps because they are reluctant to reach spring/summer with lower capacity. How far they got with drawing down I'm not sure, but lower gorple Res. Was full last week. In hebden at least, a large part of the problem lies with flash run off over farmland running rapidly down road system overwhelming the drainage system, filling the canal which then overflows into the town centre. I'm no expert, but the EA doesnt have the teeth or the resources to deal with the physical problems or powerful interests. Our infrastructure is a disconnected shambles, basically. Right, I'm off now to move the dehumidifiers out of my mum's wrecked flat as it's likely that it'll be underwater again tonight.

It feels like it needs a whole new approach. Any localised flood defences simply move the issue up or downstream. Wouldn't it make sense to go left-field, the 'island' row of terrace houses in Mytholmroyd opposite the Coop for example...White Houses. Remove them ? Could many of the regularly flooded houses be adapted so the ground floor is effectively a waterproofed 'cellar' and develop a lightweight 2nd floor to add extra space. Failing that, linking in with insurance firms and simply demolishing dozens of houses and re-building them to be flood proof.
It all feels like we keep replacing the sticking plaster and never look at the fact that we won't beat this issue into submission, we need to work with it.
A canal, a road, a river and a railway in a valley in places just 100 feet wide was always going to be a problem (I live over the hill and worked in HB for 10 years 20 yrs ago so know the issues well)

I was typing as you posted gallowayboy. Thanks for that.

In hebden at least, a large part of the problem lies with flash run off over farmland

And not just Hebden, I live in Heptonstall, which at 280m above sea level you'd have thought would be safe. But this issue causes my house to flood pretty much every time there is heavier than normal rainfall over an extended period of 24-48 hours. It's nothing to do with heather burn off or beavers or anything, it's about a decayed water management infrastructure that's been left so long it's no longer repairable by individual landowners. I'm pretty sure the woman who owns the field above me would like nothing more than to repair the land drains and so on, but I'm pretty sure the reason she doesn't is the cost.

anyway, I've been flooded 3 times in the last 5 years, I'm sat here expecting to be flooded again after last weekend, it's pretty much the main reason I'm leaving as soon as I can.

I have wondered for a few years why it isn't a condition of the planning permission in flood risk areas for new builds to be elevated 1-2 feet off the ground, to help reduce the chance of flooding. If houses are to be built in flood plains surely this is a logical & reasonable requirement?

Is anyone able to shed some light on this for me?

I have wondered for a few years why it isn’t a condition of the planning permission in flood risk areas for new builds to be elevated 1-2 feet off the ground, to help reduce the chance of flooding. If houses are to be built in flood plains surely this is a logical & reasonable requirement?

Is anyone able to shed some light on this for me?

It makes sense to do the above, maybe elevate a metre or two for full(ish) protection.
Got involved in converting an old reservoir tank into houses. Basically the “underground” section contained the garages, with utility rooms. The washing machines / dryers etc were installed a metre off the ground. The garages had a sump and a pump in the corner. These lower areas were fully tanked. New owners were told not to convert the garages into additional living areas as they may be liable to flooding.

So , surely the simplest solution is to build townhouse type dwellings with ground floor garages that can have watertight garage doors, tanked and with sumps / pumps in case the worst happens.

All that doesn't sound very inclusive of disability. *

* Tongue in cheek but half truth. My current house is 4 ft off ground level.

During planning for building work I Had all sorts of diasilibity hoops to jump.through despite there being 5 steps to get up at either side of the house to get inside and 22 steps to the bedrooms

How ever your idea is what they do in other parts of the world regularly.

It’s nothing to do with heather burn off or beavers or anything, it’s about a decayed water management infrastructure

How do you know? Whats growing the the fields makes a massive difference to run off.

How do you know?

Are you ****ing serious?

All that doesn’t sound very inclusive of disability. *

Interesting point . What are the requirements to cater for disabilities when building new houses for the general public ? I’m guessing very little.

revs - quite a lot.

Downstairs toilet, accessible switches and sockets are two I can think of.

And probably space, look at the space taken up by a house in a modern development, now imagine the additional space required if the house is elevated by x and a wheelchair ramp to access the property is built. No developer is gong to do anything of the sort until they are mandated to.

Why haven't they been? Well that's a question for you councillors/planning/MP to be answering.

Population growth and increasing hard surfacing innit?

Are you **** serious?

Yep, do you have much understanding of what causes run off?

I have wondered for a few years why it isn’t a condition of the planning permission in flood risk areas for new builds to be elevated 1-2 feet off the ground, to help reduce the chance of flooding. If houses are to be built in flood plains surely this is a logical & reasonable requirement?

Is anyone able to shed some light on this for me?

Becasue as mentioned above by a couple of different people, there is zero joined-up thinking. The cash-strapped council want to sell some land to a developer. The developer wants to build houses as cheaply and quickly as possible, sell them and move on to the next project. Asking them to build them on stilts or add in a shedload of flood defences adds to the cost which is passed on to the buyer. Everyone wants things on the cheap, including the buyer.

Once they're bought, the developers can deny all responsibility for flooding, passing the buck to the poor EA and to the insurers.

And the more you build (even dozens of miles away) the more concrete there is, the more water runs off it rather than sitting on/in the ground and the worse the problem gets elsewhere. Couple that with run-off from farms and fields, straightened watercourses, poor maintenance of drains/ditches/culverts, more extreme weather due to climate change and (in certain cases) flood defences in one place pushing the problem downstream.

The Government has absolutely no strategic plan for transport, housing (and the related infrastructure like roads, public transport, utilities, schools...), it's all just a hotch-potch of half-related schemes that are usually done as "sticking plaster" reactive solutions.

We built a housing estate but now that local road is gridlocked, we'd best build a bypass.
We built the bypass but now someone has come along and built an out-of-town shopping centre on it so traffic is back to previous levels.
Now we need more housing to cope with demand so we'll build down here.
Oops, building down here means that over there now floods, we'll build some defences.

It's all just one massive merry-go-round of attempting to fix previous ****-ups without ever learning from any of it.

I have wondered for a few years why it isn’t a condition of the planning permission in flood risk areas for new builds to be elevated 1-2 feet off the ground, to help reduce the chance of flooding.

So it sort of is, but (there's always a but) it doesn't always work for a couple of reasons. The developer will be expected to undertake flood risks assessments, overland flow analysis, etc. To show that flooding under certain scenarios is a sufficiently low risk. If it is then raising the development platform, implementing catchment ponds, etc. Can be put in place as mitigation.

Problem 1: The consultant doing the work may do a bare minimum quick job on low fees which reduces the level of robustness of the modelling.
Problem 2: Guidance documentation is out of date and uses historical weather files and/or assumptions on climate change rather than science based predictions on likely emissions scenarios.
Problem 3: The EA and others are massively underfunded so struggle to bring revised guidance forward quick enough meaning a huge time lag between the latest predictions on climate change and published guidance. The EA released additional climate change predictions at the end of last year based on a near worst case emissions scenario, but this still used findings from UKCP09 which is over 10years old rather than UKCP18 (note: this isn't the EA's fault, again it comes down to time to undertake work, funding, etc.).
Problem 4: The Local Authority in most cases will also be under funded and under staffed with people of sufficient technical knowledge to review planning submissions properly.
Problem 5: There is a huge pressure on nearly all Local Authorities to provide more housing.
Problem 6: I mentioned this earlier in the thread but it's the owner/insurer that pays when it all goes wrong - there's typically no clear link back to the developer. It'll be interesting to see if this changes though.
Problem 7: We still consider developments on a plot by plot basis. There may be flood maps for an area but there isn't and overall 'masterplan' type approach for water management in a lot of areas.

That's just everything I can think of over the period of a cup of tea, but admittedly I'm giving a talk on climate resilience in a few weeks! One of my key points will be that we (those in consultancy, etc.) need to start putting a hell of a lot more pressure on government to drive change in this area.

@crazy-legs - great minds and fools! 😉

Ahhhh… so do those credentials make you a….? 😉

They make me someone who can rely on their own experience rather than the emetic outpourings of a keyboard warrior.

@honeybadgerx - your response is considerably more detailed but yes, looks like we were typing basically the same stuff at the same time!

Ransos, may have experience coming out of his fundament, but as far as the Somerset Levels are concerned, the EA officer in charge of the region decided that the local rivers authorities were no longer needed, and all river dredging was stopped, allowing the rivers to silt up, in one case the river’s carrying capacity was reduced to roughly 30%, which meant that even a small increase in rainfall, added to by increased runoff from the surrounding moorland, caused significant flooding. This was a deliberate policy aimed at returning farmland that had been in use for around 1000 years by monks from Glastonbury building the networks of ditches to drain the salt marshes to wildlife-friendly marsh.
Ignoring, of course, that this drastically affected the livelihood of many, many people.
He no longer has the job, the local river authorities have been reinstated and the dredging has been carried out. Oddly enough, there has been little to no significant flooding in the area since locals with relevant knowledge of their environment have had control, and not the EA.
Now, you may well consider yourself an expert, so did the bloke who no longer has a job in that region; but it’s funny that while an ‘expert’ was involved there was catastrophic flooding that in some places didn’t disappear for six months, and now the ‘expert’ has gone, and the locals, who by your estimation are ignorant, have taken over, the flooding doesn’t happen.
Still, what’s generations of local knowledge stretching back a thousand years compared to someone with twenty years, eh?
#eyeroll
Just as an example, this is a bridge over one of the main rivers. At the sides of the main structure can be seen two partial holes, they’re designed to allow water to continue to flow even when the river is at a high level, rather than backing up at the sides and overflowing the banks.
This photo shows the result of EA’s decision to stop dredging, the result of which should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a complete idiot.

This old photo shows what it should look like:

Now, you may well consider yourself an expert,

I've never claimed anything of the sort. What I do know is that dredging is very high cost for limited benefit, which ultimately is why it has been cut back as funding has reduced. I also know that correlation is not causation as I'm not a Tory minister nor a keyboard warrior.

Ultimately, people need to accept the need for better preventive measures, perhaps of the kind that have been deployed in the Stroud valleys.

Countzero, are you sure those holes are to allow flow? It's not uncommon for masonry arch bridges to have the haunches lightened by putting holes in - like this one in Pontypridd.

Too heavy haunches can cause collapse by pushing the drown of the arch upwards.

I imagine people in Calderdale would like an interventionist government, a government that takes northern voters seriously, a properly funded local authority that could manage water and stand up to confront inappropriate building developments and landowners burning off the ground to improve their shooting businesses. So what do they do? Elect a Tory MP. Try to explain that whilst keeping a straight face.

Countzero, are you sure those holes are to allow flow? It’s not uncommon for masonry arch bridges to have the haunches lightened by putting holes in – like this one in Pontypridd.

Given the capacity of them and the design/location I doubt they would have a measurable impact on flow at all.