Toolmaker builds his own flood defences

I don't want to exploit my position as a moderator,

Please take the following as a purely personal view and I will just make the one statement. I have (and continue) to do a lot of work alongside the Environment Agency (going way back to the late 80s, when it was the NRA). This has included quite a lot relating to WFD and catchment management, but also included SUDS, flood defence work and also working with unrelated groups involved with 'top of the catchment' actions.

I have more practical experience on these issues than any engineering topics.

There are powerful counter-arguments on the dredging front, not least that most of the dredging people are lobbying for would protect agricultural land upstream of settlements. Increasing the flows in these areas instead of allowing the low-lying agricultural land (i.e. what is left of the natural flood plain) to flood would just make the situation in towns and villages downstream worse.

Catchment and flood modelling is a fine art and comparable to finite element analysis used in engineering. It is used to plan flood defences and plan dredging and other works, and is remarkably accurate and useful. It is also used to show when 'natural' approaches to waterway management are equally or more effective than the 'traditional' ones which are the root cause of so many of the flooding problems we have now.

I have first hand experience of a site that was meant to be a traditional, engineered, flood control site created by creating a flood bank from dredgings as John suggests, but with the idea it would act as a flood reservoir. It didn't work, not least because some water just shoots in one end and out the other, while most whizzes past in the canalised channel to one side. The original meandering river course would have allowed the whole, uninhabited, area to flood deeper and slowed the flow, protecting several major buinesses downstream.

By-the-bye - the area was classed as being likely to flood every 20-25 years. Increased flood events in the 2000s meant it was flooding once or twice a year - the real problem is climate change, and it won't be solved by dredging in the wrong places.

I'll shut up now.

Neil

They are called "flood planes" for a reason. Trying to get the water past quickly instead has never worked.

Farmers upstream get paid subsidies (yes, from the EU) - but only for land that is "maintained" as farmland, not as scrub or wild, so are encouraged to make the land clean and bare with little means of soaking / holding water, whether or not they actually do anything with it. This also includes moorland that has been burned back for pheasants etc. So they are being paid to cause flooding.

And developers are allowed to build properties in the flood planes even though the insurance companies have said they will never insure them. But with silly house prices, that's not considered an impediment.

Floods and Dredging a Reality Check

Chances are you won't agree with his politics but here's an overview on how we are paying for our towns to be flooded.

An interesting insight into what is a very complex problem Neil. With so many variables to take in to account it is easy to see that flood prevention in one area will most likely increase the risk of flooding elsewhere. This, coupled with the fact that accurate prediction of where & when heavy rain is likely to fall is virtually impossible beyond a period of a few days ahead, clearly shows it is ridiculous to lay blame on the EA, other water authorities or indeed the government when flooding occurs due to previously unseen extremes of rainfall.

If these recent catastrophic levels of flooding are an indication of climate change, either natural or brought on by human activity, perhaps mankind should be looking to find ways of preventing the rain falling in such uncontrollable quantities rather than trying to deal with it once it has already arrived. Clearly a ridiculous suggestion but no more naive than thinking we can persuade governments to throw limitless amounts of cash at flood prevention schemes on the assumption that everyone will be protected from future flood risk!

Regards Martin.

Whilst I don't believe the European Union to the best of all possible institutions, dare I suggest that the EWF probably isn't to blame for recent flooding or for the suffering of flood victims. I read the directive and didn't see anything obviously unreasonable in it. For instance it says:

"(13) There are diverse conditions and needs in the Community which require different specific solutions. This diversity should be taken into account in the planning and execution of measures to ensure protection and sustainable use of water in the framework of the river basin. Decisions should be taken as close as possible to the locations where water is affected or used. Priority should be given to action within the responsibility of Member States through the drawing up of programmes of measures adjusted to regional and local conditions." This is hardly a challenge to the British way of life.

What might be a problem to certain vested interests is, with my emboldening:

"(11) As set out in Article 174 of the Treaty, the Community policy on the environment is to contribute to pursuit of the objectives of preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment, in prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources, and to be based on the precautionary principle and on the principles that preventive action should be taken, environmental damage should, as a priority, be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay. "

"Dredging" isn't mentioned by the directive at all. Am I missing something?

What SillyOodDuffer is missing is that there are a number of people who blame the EEC for everything, even when it has nothing to do with Brussels bureaucrats. What often happens is that Brussels puts something forward which is eminently sensible, and then our Whitehall lot (well qualified in Ancient Greek and Latin etc) gold plate it. I've read a few Brussels directives and Euro Standards in the course of my professional life and not had any problem with them. I do think though that they should keep their noses out of what are purely national issues.

Edited By duncan webster on 30/12/2015 22:44:26

George is - unique?