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[s] record amount of sustained rainfall [/s] 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!.
[i]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]
I come from here, all pretty much below high-tide and dates back to the 19th century.
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:
[url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes ]Drowning in money: the untold story of the crazy public spending that makes flooding inevitable[/url]
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 [b]m[/b][s]h[/s][b]arsh[/b] attitude about these Somerset floodsFTFY 🙂
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 [url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes ]george monbiot[/url]
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...
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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.
I don't believe dredging the river Parrett would make much difference to the flooding on the levels, aside from a small increase in the river's capacity as a short-term reservoir. The amount of flow is very limited due to the small drop to mean sea level, and the tidal nature of the river means that for a significant part of the day there is effectively no outflow, and for some of it there's a flow inwards. That could maybe be helped by some downriver sluices but really the levels are flooded because there has been a lot of rain.
The EA have reduced the amount of dredging they do. This was for environmental reasons.They did not put any other measures in place to compensate for the reduced capacity of the rivers.
We have just had very high levels of rain and the flooding has been worse than it would of been 20 years ago because of this. It would of flooded but not like this.
I blame the EA. Seem to have lost the plot.
more trees everywhere its got to be a win win for everyone
More trees in upland areas is where they should be. Our intellectually-challenged environment minister had a brief bout of understanding this earlier in the week but was back to the "party-line" once Dave had spoken on the issue.
There is no quick fix, which the Westminster clowns can use so they lose interest in doing it properly.
Yes, the EA came under the control of "environmentalists" who were more concerned about saving the river oysters and little birdies, than assisting the farmers in maintaining their businesses and the local populace to live in safer conditions. That's why the dredging stopped.
There's a similar move being made in Cumbria to force the hill farmers off the land so it can return to what it might have been like 3,000 years ago, by a bunch of town-dwelling green obsessives who make a comfortable living for themselves elsewhere.
Michael Eavis:
I find it entirely understandable that large numbers of people who've had to commute by boat for a month are pretty pissed off and looking for someone to blame. I briefly succumbed myself, threatening to remove a downstream sluice with an axe 🙂 their opinions are newsworthy not because of their validity, but because of human interest. They deserve to be a part of the debate, surely?
As wobbliscott says, the Somerset Levels are a different situation to most river flooding. They are, historically, marshlands that have been reclaimed centuries ago with man-made rivers to manage them. The flooding isn't due to rivers/water channels over-spilling their banks (as in natural rivers spilling into their flood plains) but because the rivers/water channels cannot cope with the excess rainwater falling onto the land being sluiced and pumped into them. Hence the argument that stopping dredging (effectively reducing the capacity of the rivers/channels) means that water stands for longer on the adjacent land. The locals accept that there will be flooding because of the nature of the area but usually flood water can be dispersed into the rivers/channels within a day or two. Since dredging stopped, the water stands for much longer and, in this instance, for several weeks.
The flooding being experienced elsewhere is for many and various reasons, mostly man made 🙁
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.
With respect, is a manager at British Home Stores really [i]that[/i] qualified to comment? 😉
I'll be damned if I can remember where I saw it, but a couple of years ago I came across a very good physical model where you could build conurbations and choose to have straight or windy roads; grass, gravel or tarmac gardens/drives and even the roofing materials. Then you simulated a heavy rainfall and got to see how the water behaved.
Unsurprisingly the optimum scenario was less tarmac and more grass and gravel, and I believe windy roads were better than straight ones.
It's not just about thinking a little more where to build, but all the other factors that go with that are just as responsible for rainfall management.
Proper planned and sustained dredging makes a positive difference to the land alongside, as does not filling in dykes and ditches to make bigger fields.
Yes, the EA came under the control of "environmentalists" who were more concerned about saving the river oysters and little birdies, than assisting the farmers in maintaining their businesses and the local populace to live in safer conditions. That's why the dredging stopped.
Well said Mr Woppit.
With respect, is a manager at British Home Stores really that qualified to comment?
😀
It's a shame the UK is under the jackboot of environmentalists. Won't someone stand up for the interests of global agribusiness and market solutions?
The comment about people in the EA earning lots ofmoney is Bollocks. They earn an awful lot less than their peers in engineering consulting who do similar work
Dredging argument is a weird one. If the dredged channel can cope with 1 unit of water per hour but its rained so much the previous days that the flow is 2 units per hour then it won't stop flooding. It's the same as the idiots who say that flood defences fail when they are overtopped. A 2m defence can't stop 3m of flooding. (it's much more complicated than this but I've used small words for the benefit of some of the posters above)
Concrete pillars would help reduce the damage if you have to build houses on a flood plain but in extreme floods such as some of the recent ones the volume of boulders or debris moving around inthe flood could easily damage concrete pillars.
konabunny - Member
It's a shame the [s]UK[/s] Environment Agency is under the [s]jackboot[/s] influence of environmentalists who are also attacking the National Trust. Won't someone stand up for the interests of [s]global agribusiness and market solutions[/s] local farmers and the surrounding population?
🙄
Kona bunny - I think you'll see market solutions coming in the next 5 years. Green shoots already starting in east anglia. There's also a project starting up for the Severn catchment
Dredging argument is a weird one. If the dredged channel can cope with 1 unit of water per hour but its rained so much the previous days that the flow is 2 units per hour then it won't stop flooding.
No it won't stop flooding but it will reduce it and allow it clear quicker.
It's a shame the UK is under the jackboot of environmentalists. Won't someone stand up for the interests of global agribusiness and market solutions?
That's not really the case in Somerset is it?
People are living in a managed landscape that used to be marshland but was drained over the years. Now some misguided civil servants have changed how they manage it with some really bad results.
The National Trust? Weren't you the one slagging off town-dwelling obsessives who make a comfortable living for themselves elsewhere?
Just can't see the house builders coughing up the money to allow for concrete stilt/pilings. They build to the absolute minimum standards and can barely comply to code standards or building regs so unless government pressure is applied to build this way on flood plains then no chance they will just carry on regardless.
Flooding is a horrendous thing to experience but I'm afraid I'm in the harsh camp, tbh - yes, land and river management policies may have made it worse, and need to be reviewed, but what has flooded before will always flood again. In some ways flood prevention makes things worse by making it less regular and then when it does happen it is apparently a shock, as in Yalding.
I was brought up on the edge of the Fens, our house had a mark from the 1953 floods but had not flooded since, but my parents eventually moved when they saw how close they were getting to having it happen again.
Have mixed views on the Thames Barrier - half of me thinks "sod them", the other half accepts that because we are so London centric we really would be stuffed if it happened. I'd like to see more stuff being out of London in readiness for the day, because it will happen, and probably in my lifetime.
They need to build more bungahighs
In the Levels there aren't all that many flooded homes, most of them are actually built on [i]relatively[/i] high ground. However, I don't think bungahighs will help get people down a mile of road that's under 1-2m of filthy water so they can get onto the dry road network and deliver their children to school, themselves to work and get some shopping in.
I never needed much of an excuse to get the jet ski out 😀
I never needed much of an excuse to get the jet ski out
Just the job if you've managed to pre-position a car somewhere you can beach the jet ski, and you manage to get there without hitting any fenceposts, submerged cars, dead badgers or random floating debris.
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.
We've already got standing water in playing fields around Cambridge and we've had no where near as much water as the South has.....
Strangely, when I were a lad in the 70s, quite large stretches of East Anglia would go under several inches of water every year, and when it had frozen solid they used to hold an [i]annual[/i] speed skating contest.
Just cos it hasn't happened for a few years doesn't make it a disaster now
Dredging. Doesn't. Work.
Or to be more accurate, it makes it work for one tiny bit of river then ruins things for everyone downstream. The reason we have floods is due to:
a) Landowners ripping up trees in order to claim subsidies the promote this backwards policy. Start paying the subsidy on forested land and you're half-way towards solving the problem. Forested land absorbs over 200x more water than pasture.
b) Extensive building work with poor drainage planning over the past 100 years. Unsurprisingly when the water runs directly off the surface, it gets to the river faster.
c) Unusual weather patterns. Might be due to climate change (which is obviously happening), but could equally be coincidence. Sometimes it just rains a lot.
d) Building a house on a flood plain. A fertile flood plain which, as others have pointed out, is only fertile thanks to flooding in the past.
Near me in Suffolk the sea walls have been breached in quite a few places, it's a bit worse this year than usual but hasn't caused significant problems.
I have no qualifications on the subject but Suffolk seems to fair pretty well despite being barely above sea level. Possibly something to do with a lot of forestry, relatively little development and being on the east there's quite a bit less rainfall than the west coast.
Suffolk is basically a desert with a thin layer of soil on top.
People are living in a managed landscape that used to be marshland but was drained over the years. Now some misguided civil servants have changed how they manage it with some really bad results.
And the drainage of the land will have decreased it's height above mOAD due to peat wastage. Meaning that when the leveed rivers overtop, the water has to flow further downstream to drain off it. Compound this with an area that has a mean mOAD of a few metres and you have no flow. So even a dredged channel would not help once the levees have overtopped. But you know, that's the environmentalists fault eh.
Mr Woppit - Member
Yes, the EA came under the control of "environmentalists" who were more concerned about saving the river oysters and little birdies, than assisting the farmers in maintaining their businesses and the local populace to live in safer conditions. That's why the dredging stopped.There's a similar move being made in Cumbria to force the hill farmers off the land so it can return to what it might have been like 3,000 years ago, by a bunch of town-dwelling green obsessives who make a comfortable living for themselves elsewhere.
Not sure whether you are a troll or not Woppit... Farmers are ridiculously helped, even when they do not deserve it. The average combinable crop farmer doubles his profits after taxes and drawings have been taken by basic subsidies. Why should taxpayers subsidise profitable industry? I digress from the thread, sorry. Dredging also stopped to direct limited resources to places where it is needed, ie urban areas. You know the economic heartlands of the Country.
I'd like to know who you got your information off re the latter point. It really has made me laugh! Nothing like sensationalism and hyperbole to try and justify a bit of nonsense!
According to BBC, less than 200 homes were actually flooded on the levels, and it would cost £100m to protect / make more resiliant.
Might we be better in some of these areas to abandon...?
😕
Are they still flooded?
Yep
But parts of the levels are still under water and villages cut off 2 months later?
Be cheaper to compulsory purchase all the houses at market rates pre-floods and then just turn the whole area into a reservoir.....
A reservoir. Are you kidding? That land is worth a fortune as paddy fields.
However, I don't think bungahighs will help get people down a mile of road that's under 1-2m of filthy water so they can get onto the dry road network and deliver their children to school, themselves to work and get some shopping in.
How much does it cost to build a 1 or 2m high embankment on flat land to run the road along? The Victorians managed to do hundreds of miles of embankments for railways with pick and shovel. Surely raising vulnerable roads a few feet wouldn't be expensive?
Managed retreat. Its the only way. You cannot keep spending money to keep nature at bay.
The rivers are silting up because they are returning to their natural state. Let them.
The answer is short and harsh. Dont live in an area that floods - and dont place reliance upon an authority carrying out mitigative work forever. This is the case with attenuation ponds, reliance of people to do 'stuff' during a flood etc that developers propose as mitigative options in order to get developments through planning - residential dwellings have a design life of 100 years - will the developer be there to manage the attenuation pond in 100 years time or will the flood action plan have been passed from householder to householder - no they won't
The householders must take some responsibility for choosing to live where they have rather than finger pointing and trying to blame someone else.
Teenrat, don't talk bollocks, the Dutch have been successfully managing living in a country that's largely below sea level.
The rivers around there vary, to the north the River Brue which roughly defines the top edge of the Levels, runs past Glastonbury and joins the sea at Highbridge hasn't flooded and isn't silted. Why? Because it's properly managed, and has a tidal gate to stop the sea from bringing silt in at high tide and clogging up the river.
This is why you see no issues in the northern Levels. All that's needed is for the Tone and Parrat to be managed like they have been since Roman times, by locals who know exactly what needs doing, and for a tidal gate at the mouth of the Parrat like the Brue has, keeping in mind that the Tone joins the Parrat at Burrowbridge, which is the limit of the tidal section of the river.
Given those two provisos, expensive works like building up roads wouldn't be necessary, because the flooding would be very much more controlled, like it has been for centuries.
🙄The householders must take some responsibility for choosing to live where they have rather than finger pointing and trying to blame someone else.
Really, do you only read the Daily Mail or The Sun? You do realise these people have been living in the same places for generations! There are farms under water that have never flooded in 150 years! Don't you grasp what the significance of that is?
They have a legitimate cause to blame someone else; the EA, who scrapped all the local Water Boards twenty years ago, with a commitment to let the rivers flood for environmental reasons.
They talk about costs of dredging, yet spend £22million pounds on a nature reserve at Steart Point, how does that make sense?
Maybe you ought to visit the Nederlands, and lecture them about living somewhere that would flood without their spending millions of Euros to stop it.
Expect to be told politely to go screw yourself.
Clot.
Of course, the Dutch would not move villages, have sacrificial farm land that floods and the few remaining houses on earth mounds to allow flooding to happen, would they?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/16/flooding-netherlands
I love all this managed landscape back to the romans tosh being spouted, makes it sound like there has been a masterplan for the levels for millennia. At best it might have been managed cohesively since the war, maybe a 40 year period. Before that individual areas were managed by individual land owners who basical dug ditches to get water off their land and onto someone else asap. One thing that has come out of this thread is most people agree the whole catchment basin needs managing in order to protect those couple of hundred homes and farms, the political structures and most of the technology didn't exist 100 years ago.
Bottom line is the media have now forgotten about, the government / EA will look at the commercial aspects and concluded big flood defence schemes aren't justifiable. In the meantime the one thing the government has done is to get a levy on home insurance to pay for the insurance of the uninsurable which defeats the basic concept of insuring against a risk and we pay anyway, no body wins.
Funny seeing this thread again. We're in West Berks and have been VERY close to flooding more than once this winter. Even last Saturday, where we had to call 999 and get the Fire Service out, who funnily enough have still not left from our callout on Sat. Although they are proposed to leave today (being replaced by the EA)
We were looking through the survey report which stated that our house had between a 0-2% chance of flooding within our lifetime. So, not all people who purchase houses and are later affected by floods are completely stupid and bought in a flood plain.
Interesting to note, the Fire crew and kit is costing ITRO £2000 per day to be outside our house currently.