HRH... Flooding.... sorted...

RideOnTime

Prince Charles has been to Somerset. Sorted...

capt_slog

Yup, throw a wet blanket on the water, that will do it.

Anonymous

Not sure why he went there or what he did but guessing he did not have to go and cannot personally do much anyway.

He seems quite genuine about countryside issues so hopefully the residents appreciated his visit for what it was worth.

bianchimoon

praps he was thinking about the good old days when his ancestors had a window tax checking out whether the duchy of cornwall could have a standing water tax for it's tenants ?

Anonymous

Maybe he had just had a row with Camilla and thought it better to get out of the 'house' for some fresh air rather than calling the SAS in again 8)

arran77

Carbonator wrote:

Maybe he had just had a row with Camilla and thought it better to get out of the 'house' for some fresh air rather than calling the SAS in again 8)

Mikey23

I think he 'donated' 50k. Presumably not from his own pocket though

But without wishing to offend, these guys live in a flood plain. There's a bit of a clue there. Sick and tired of all their yapping about it being someone else's fault. Blame the environment agency cos they ain't been dredging enough. Blame thatcher. You chose to live in a flood plain. It gets flooded you muppets. Get on with your lives...

I heard the other day that the word Somerset is based on the fact that's it was inhabitable only during the summer.

Anonymous

Yeah Mikey, Yeah ;-)

Its like these people that live near airports and then complain about aircraft noise, or move next to a school and moan that there are cars parked everywhere for half an hour twice a day :roll:

bianchimoon

just another farming scam to get even more compo, if they do get compo don't be surprised to hear run off watercourses have been blocked up in future!!!, back to the old foot and mouth scam days

Paulie W

Mikey23 wrote:

I think he 'donated' 50k. Presumably not from his own pocket though

But without wishing to offend, these guys live in a flood plain. There's a bit of a clue there. Sick and tired of all their yapping about it being someone else's fault. Blame the environment agency cos they ain't been dredging enough. Blame thatcher. You chose to live in a flood plain. It gets flooded you muppets. Get on with your lives...

I heard the other day that the word Somerset is based on the fact that's it was inhabitable only during the summer.

Without wishing to offend!?! Have the courage of your friggin' convictions mate!

bianchimoon

Paulie W wrote:

Mikey23 wrote:

I think he 'donated' 50k. Presumably not from his own pocket though

But without wishing to offend, these guys live in a flood plain. There's a bit of a clue there. Sick and tired of all their yapping about it being someone else's fault. Blame the environment agency cos they ain't been dredging enough. Blame thatcher. You chose to live in a flood plain. It gets flooded you muppets. Get on with your lives...

I heard the other day that the word Somerset is based on the fact that's it was inhabitable only during the summer.

Without wishing to offend!?! Have the courage of your friggin' convictions mate!

Without wishing to offend! - PaulieW - Location Somerset (possibly)

briantrumpet

Mikey23 wrote:

But without wishing to offend, these guys live in a flood plain. There's a bit of a clue there. Sick and tired of all their yapping about it being someone else's fault. Blame the environment agency cos they ain't been dredging enough. Blame thatcher. You chose to live in a flood plain. It gets flooded you muppets. Get on with your lives...

I heard the other day that the word Somerset is based on the fact that's it was inhabitable only during the summer.

But I suspect that if you lived there and you saw the drainage degrading year on year because of neglect by the Environment Agency , despite your having to pay a special drainage levy, you might get a bit miffed too. A quick bit of basic maths says that if you let the water table rise by just one inch over the area of the Levels, you'll have an extra 3.5 BILLION gallons of water stored in the Levels, which puts the EA's latest "we're pumping 1 million gallons of water out per day" into perspective. It's flooded not just because it has rained a lot, but because the water levels in the Levels have 'been allowed' to rise because of lack of maintenance of the long-established system of dykes and well-dredged rivers. Somehow dykes and drains keep the whole of Holland dry, but we can't manage it for a part of Somerset.

If people who don't live there think it's a good idea to allow it to 'return to nature' (i.e., uninhabitable by humans), then it's a perfectly valid thing to debate and come to a consensus about (through parliament), but at the moment it's happening either because of diabolical lack of management by the EA, or because of a policy which has never been discussed publicly. That's not good enough, and it would make me cross too, if my house was under water.

briantrumpet

Incidentally, to get a handle on the scale of the flooding, see below a NASA satellite image taken on 23 January. Top left is Bridgwater, bottom left Taunton. The Levels cover rather more area than the Isle of Wight, to give you some sense of the scale of the amount of land you're talking about leaving to nature. I guess few of us have ever been short of food.

mr_goo

Chazza would have gone to visit the flood affected region of Somerset out of genuine concern and interest. Unlike the environment secretary last week, who probably had his ear bent by Camoron..... 'get your 4r5e down there Owen, or we'll drop another point in the opinion polls'.

Chazza is apparently a real good chap. My wife's late uncle was an agricultural engineer who invented machinery for third world farmers. He met him at a trade fair and they had a good chat, which was rounded off by Chazza asking him if he fancied a drink. Off went HRH, who duly came back with a couple of pints.

rolf_f

The levels are below sea level. Dredging would increase the capacity of the rivers to some degree but it wouldn't have stopped them flooding. The levels have always flooded - people saying 'it's never happened like this before - it's all down to the lack of dredging' are simply not stating facts.

There's a lot of effort that goes into flood protection. Funny how 1.1m properties can be protected from flooding but that counts for nothing when 40 properties built on land that historically was marshland and open water get flooded.

Hopefully, the taxpayer will be happy to pay a bit more tax to dredge the rivers and keep their fingers crossed that we don't get the same weather their that we've had this winter and get the same flooding - because who would they blame then?

briantrumpet wrote:

A quick bit of basic maths says that if you let the water table rise by just one inch over the area of the Levels, you'll have an extra 3.5 BILLION gallons of water stored in the Levels, which puts the EA's latest "we're pumping 1 million gallons of water out per day" into perspective.

OK, lets say your basic maths is correct (actually, lets not - if you think a gallon of water weighs a tonne then I wouldn't recommend having a bath unless you're in a ground floor flat!). Now tell us how much extra water capacity would there be in the watercourses if they were dredged. What proportion of the land area of the levels is watercourse? Once the riverbanks have been overtopped (and no amount of dredging will stop that), then the dredged channel just represents a very small increase in storage above that of the levels themselves. Flow isn't fast there - the Parrett has a drop of one foot per mile.

And when you have dredged it, and paid for that dredging, how soon are you going to be happy to pay to have it re-dredged because every big tide will bring more silt in. This is what you have to consider when you decide to protect a property against flooding resulting from rainfall quantities that are greater than recorded. You can protect everyone against everything - it's dead easy. All you have to do is pay for it.

Pross

briantrumpet wrote:

Incidentally, to get a handle on the scale of the flooding, see below a NASA satellite image taken on 23 January. Top left is Bridgwater, bottom left Taunton. The Levels cover rather more area than the Isle of Wight, to give you some sense of the scale of the amount of land you're talking about leaving to nature. I guess few of us have ever been short of food.

I drove long the ridge just south of Street on 10 January, just after the water was at its peak. I hadn't even thought about it but noticed news crews pulled up on the one viewing point and when I looked you could see pretty much everything to the south was under water. I knew it had been bad but before that I hadn't really appreciated the extent. It's a good 15 miles in land from Bridgwater to that point I think. Strangely, the levels to the north were fine despite being basically the same height above sea level.

Wasn't Glastonbury Tor once an island?

briantrumpet

Rolf F wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

A quick bit of basic maths says that if you let the water table rise by just one inch over the area of the Levels, you'll have an extra 3.5 BILLION gallons of water stored in the Levels, which puts the EA's latest "we're pumping 1 million gallons of water out per day" into perspective.

OK, lets say your basic maths is correct (actually, lets not - if you think a gallon of water weighs a tonne then I wouldn't recommend having a bath unless you're in a ground floor flat!). Now tell us how much extra water capacity would there be in the watercourses if they were dredged. What proportion of the land area of the levels is watercourse? Once the riverbanks have been overtopped (and no amount of dredging will stop that), then the dredged channel just represents a very small increase in storage above that of the levels themselves. Flow isn't fast there - the Parrett has a drop of one foot per mile.

And when you have dredged it, and paid for that dredging, how soon are you going to be happy to pay to have it re-dredged because every big tide will bring more silt in. This is what you have to consider when you decide to protect a property against flooding resulting from rainfall quantities that are greater than recorded. You can protect everyone against everything - it's dead easy. All you have to do is pay for it.

Two things - perhaps you have had extensive dealings with dained wetland, but it's not the storage capacity of the rivers that makes the difference, it's how much water is stored in all the land round the drainage system that makes the difference - if you allow the drains and rivers to silt up, everything gets more waterlogged. If the water can't escape in the drier periods, then you have permanently waterlogged fields, and no capacity to absorb extra rain.

Fair cop on the misquote. Should have checked.

Mikey23

So I chose to live at 400 ft in cornwall so no danger of flooding and high tides. The possibility of disappearing down a mineshaft but I can live with that. Radon poisoning? Now the only rail link with civilisation is cut as it does every five minutes when it rains or there's a high tide. So we want all that dosh being used to sort out flooding on the levels down here to repair our railway ... Or I won't vote for them

rolf_f

briantrumpet wrote:

Two things - perhaps you have had extensive dealings with dained wetland, but it's not the storage capacity of the rivers that makes the difference, it's how much water is stored in all the land round the drainage system that makes the difference - if you allow the drains and rivers to silt up, everything gets more waterlogged. If the water can't escape in the drier periods, then you have permanently waterlogged fields, and no capacity to absorb extra rain.

Conductivity of the river bed is certainly of consideration in areas underlain by permeable rock. But the Parrett isn't such a catchment. Water is controlled by artificial drainage ditches which are not really necessary in very permeable catchments. The whole system works by pumping stations controlling water levels (often using a low level, sub sea level drainage system and pumping the water up into the main river that is above the level of the land surface - similar to the Hull system which I know well) and this happens during wet and dry periods. The problem is you have a very flat catchment with very low velocities fed by quite quick flowing uplands and it is always going to be easy to flood it - the drainage system and the pumping stations (permanent ones) are designed to keep it all under control but not during extreme events that can be expected to occur so rarely that the cost of accounting for them would be prohibitive. I guess that one approach would be to dig countless more drains and build more pumping stations but that would be hugely expensive and logistically difficult. Of course, you might consider that this sort of thing will happen more often in future as a result of short or long term climate change (irrespective of cause) in which case maybe there is a strong case to review how the levels are managed. But that comes with a cost at a time when spending on this sort of work, both in terms of staff and project funding, is being cut. How many people getting uptight about this really want millions of pounds of tax revenue to go to protecting 40 properties? Particularly given that nobody has provided any evidence that activities like dredging would actually work. It's a horrible situation but looking for scapegoats isn't really a solution.

briantrumpet

Rolf F wrote:

Conductivity of the river bed is certainly of consideration in areas underlain by permeable rock. But the Parrett isn't such a catchment. Water is controlled by artificial drainage ditches which are not really necessary in very permeable catchments. The whole system works by pumping stations controlling water levels (often using a low level, sub sea level drainage system and pumping the water up into the main river that is above the level of the land surface - similar to the Hull system which I know well) and this happens during wet and dry periods. The problem is you have a very flat catchment with very low velocities fed by quite quick flowing uplands and it is always going to be easy to flood it - the drainage system and the pumping stations (permanent ones) are designed to keep it all under control but not during extreme events that can be expected to occur so rarely that the cost of accounting for them would be prohibitive. I guess that one approach would be to dig countless more drains and build more pumping stations but that would be hugely expensive and logistically difficult. Of course, you might consider that this sort of thing will happen more often in future as a result of short or long term climate change (irrespective of cause) in which case maybe there is a strong case to review how the levels are managed. But that comes with a cost at a time when spending on this sort of work, both in terms of staff and project funding, is being cut. How many people getting uptight about this really want millions of pounds of tax revenue to go to protecting 40 properties? Particularly given that nobody has provided any evidence that activities like dredging would actually work. It's a horrible situation but looking for scapegoats isn't really a solution.

All fair enough, though not maintaining an existing (and until 1990, well-maintained) drainage system, when people are paying levies to do so, doesn't seem like the best insurance against flooding. I don't think anyone's saying that the flats will/should never flood, but if you see infrastructure being allowed to degrade, and then the sorts of massive flooding there is, you would want some answers, surely? If dredging makes no difference, why did they bother for all those years? Forty houses only it may be, but it is also thousands of acres of productive farmland, not some mudflats in the Bristol Channel.

Having said that, as I say, if priorities have changed and society is saying it doesn't want that farmland (and the food produced on it), fair enough, but that's a massive decision, and shouldn't be the result of EA inaction, whether deliberate or through bad/no management.

briantrumpet

Incidentally (well, not incidentally), the RSPB were heralding the deliberate re-flooding of parts of the Levels as "great news" a couple of years ago. http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/so ... lains.html - I wonder who will be brave enough to repeat that message now with the same sentiment.

Mikey23

I gather it hasn't been a good time for worms...

RideOnTime

briantrumpet wrote:

Incidentally (well, not incidentally), the RSPB were heralding the deliberate re-flooding of parts of the Levels as "great news" a couple of years ago. http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/so ... lains.html - I wonder who will be brave enough to repeat that message now with the same sentiment.

I think I know a song about this.




No I don't....


It was something else.

Mikey23

Anyway, hope to do the BHF sportive around there in September ... Hope it's sorted out by then

rolf_f

briantrumpet wrote:

If dredging makes no difference, why did they bother for all those years? Forty houses only it may be, but it is also thousands of acres of productive farmland, not some mudflats in the Bristol Channel.

Having said that, as I say, if priorities have changed and society is saying it doesn't want that farmland (and the food produced on it), fair enough, but that's a massive decision, and shouldn't be the result of EA inaction, whether deliberate or through bad/no management.

Actually, flooding the farmland is extremely good for it. If you got up to the flatlands between Doncaster and the Humber, you'll find things called warping drains. Warping drains were constructed to deliberately allow large areas of land to flood (during high tides) and discharge silt over them which would replenish the nutrients lost by intensive agricultural practice. I suspect if warping was brought back then there would be less need for chemical fertilisers.

Dredging is fine up to a point. It just costs a lot and is never going to provide a solution to floods like those we've had in the past few weeks. I don't think there has been any degradation of infrastructure - just less dredging.

Purely on a personal level, would you be happy to pay for dredging of the Somerset levels if it meant a programme to eradicate potholes in your area was cancelled? Cameron (making a political rather than technically knowledgeable decision) has decided the dredging must happen (and, if it does, we'll have to hope that it is to be funded long term because it would be bloody wasteful to just do it at the end of winter and then not bother anymore) so the money will have to be found from somewhere and presumably somewhere where it was otherwise going to be spent. Could easily be road maintenance.

mamba80

your talking sense here Rolf.
No, I wouldn't be very happy if the scenario you've depicted happened.
my sympathies disappeared when I saw some of the houses being abandoned today, luxury, recently built detached houses.....so who exactly granted planning and who would be stupid enough to want to build/buy on an extensive flood plain......answers on a postcard please.

briantrumpet

Rolf F wrote:

Actually, flooding the farmland is extremely good for it. If you got up to the flatlands between Doncaster and the Humber, you'll find things called warping drains. Warping drains were constructed to deliberately allow large areas of land to flood (during high tides) and discharge silt over them which would replenish the nutrients lost by intensive agricultural practice. I suspect if warping was brought back then there would be less need for chemical fertilisers.

Dredging is fine up to a point. It just costs a lot and is never going to provide a solution to floods like those we've had in the past few weeks. I don't think there has been any degradation of infrastructure - just less dredging.

Purely on a personal level, would you be happy to pay for dredging of the Somerset levels if it meant a programme to eradicate potholes in your area was cancelled? Cameron (making a political rather than technically knowledgeable decision) has decided the dredging must happen (and, if it does, we'll have to hope that it is to be funded long term because it would be bloody wasteful to just do it at the end of winter and then not bother anymore) so the money will have to be found from somewhere and presumably somewhere where it was otherwise going to be spent. Could easily be road maintenance.

Though it's rather a straw man argument (given the £1.2bn budget of the Environment Agency and the priorities they choose), actually, I hope I'd choose to put up with a few potholes in return for preserving a few hundred square kilometres of productive farmland in the state it has been for a couple of hundred years. (I rather enjoy my food, and rely on farmers producing it.) Of course, no dredging is going to prevent all flooding on the Levels (and I suspect none of the farmers or residents would claim it would), but the actions of the Environment Agency certainly haven't improved the situation for them. Either the EA knew the risks of the policy of ceasing dredging, and were comfortable with the possible outcomes, or they took a chance and kept their fingers crossed. Given what the EA themselves say on their website "We are carrying out de-silting work at five ‘pinch point’ locations on the Rivers Tone and Parrett, to improve flows. We are exploring longer term solutions for a larger scale project", it's rather a shame they have allowed the drainage to degrade for 18 years before finding the "longer term solutions".

As I'll repeat (again), if the priority of the country is to return drained land to its marshy state (goodbye Norfolk?), then fair enough - but be open about it, and make the decisions democratically.

rolf_f

briantrumpet wrote:

Given what the EA themselves say on their website "We are carrying out de-silting work at five ‘pinch point’ locations on the Rivers Tone and Parrett, to improve flows. We are exploring longer term solutions for a larger scale project", it's rather a shame they have allowed the drainage to degrade for 18 years before finding the "longer term solutions".

Of course this is what they are saying - Cameron hasn't given them the choice having rushed in with policitcally motivated promises. That's fine - politicians make political decisions. Technical people make technical decisions which get over-ruled by political ones.

As regards the potholes - I'm glad you think that way. I don't think it is a totally clearcut decision which is the point - in reality, you probably decide to fix some potholes and do some dredging; compromise. The question is what is really the truth behind the consequences of how the area is managed. People believe a lot of crap (see the other flooding thread which reads like a response to a Daily Mail article - never let the facts get in the way of a good mouth foaming) which makes these issues more emotive than they should be. The facts are that in these floods, Environment Agency flood defences have protected 3500 properties and failed to protect 40. In this flood, 65 km2 of land have been flooded (as per that nice Nasa image posted) - the 1919 floods resulted in the flooding of 280 square kilometres.In 1929, they were flooded for 6 months. And the current situation is a result of rainfall greater than seen in 100 years. 175mm in Central Southern England in January alone - previous record was 158mm in 1988. And that's just January.

peat

Rolf F wrote:

Actually, flooding the farmland is extremely good for it.

Not if you have A) just chucked thousands of pounds worth of seed into the ground or intend on chucking thousands of pounds worth of seed into it because you won't be able to get machinery on or off it.

briantrumpet

Rolf F wrote:

Of course this is what they are saying - Cameron hasn't given them the choice having rushed in with policitcally motivated promises. That's fine - politicians make political decisions. Technical people make technical decisions which get over-ruled by political ones.

Though of course the 'technical decisions' (e.g. not to dredge) are often equally political, it's just that decisions are being made in private without proper democratic oversight. At least we can vote Cameron out if we think he and his government have made bad political choices - we can't do the same with the Environment Agency.

EDIT - the EA 'de-silting' began in October 2013 - I can't tell if the info given on the website was updated before or after Cameron's intervention.

bianchimoon

For those of you more in the know than me, what reasons did the EA not dredge for?
A) lack of money?
environmental decision?
C) Apathy?
D) Gambling on not having a run of very wet weather?
Were the locals genuinely kicking up a fuss over the last few years about the lack of dredging or is it simply a case of hindsight is a wonderful thing?