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

edhornby

Mrs Ed works for the EA and she says a mixture of A and B, budgets are reducing year on year and it's raining more, preservation of wetlands is a consideration also but the overriding option A influences where that wetland is going to be increased, there will be other bits of the UK that will have flooding protection that works properly but that isn't going to be in the news, cos who wants to report 'flood defences working'; not a headline is it...

rolf_f

briantrumpet wrote:

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.

The technical decisions aren't really political though there maybe a political steer. I'd question 'proper democratic oversight' as a 'proper thing' in this case! Democracy is all very well but you can't manage the environment effectively by this sort of democratic process. Camerons knee jerk popularity seeking response illustrates this. When you are dealing with processes that need to be planned over periods of decades, you just can't realistically (as far as I can see) involve a democratic process (beyond that that obviously the Govt can change organisations such as the EA if it sees fit). The reason climate change will never be adequately reacted to is that the general public don't give a stuff about what happens after they are dead if it means using their car less whilst they are alive and the decisions on how we react to climate change are political.

Peat wrote:

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.

That's not actually true - whether or not the seed is present doesn't alter the beneficial properties of the silt - particularly if you are washing away another load of seed that will suck what little is left of the natural fertility of it away! But obviously warping was a controlled process and this isn't - I was just making the point that flooding per se is not bad for the land in agricultural terms.

rolf_f

edhornby wrote:

Mrs Ed works for the EA and she says a mixture of A and B, budgets are reducing year on year and it's raining more, preservation of wetlands is a consideration also but the overriding option A influences where that wetland is going to be increased, there will be other bits of the UK that will have flooding protection that works properly but that isn't going to be in the news, cos who wants to report 'flood defences working'; not a headline is it...

D as well - gambling on not having a run of very wet weather.

Of course, it isn't gambling really. You can always build a flood defence higher but it costs a lot of money to do it. So you decide what degree of protection to give - how often it is acceptable for a flood defence to be overtopped. You can call that gambling but it is a decision based on a lot of assessment of past weather patterns. Reducing the frequency of overtopping is perfectly achievable but it is expensive and means not spending money on another defence somewhere else.

bianchimoon

Rolf F wrote:

edhornby wrote:

Mrs Ed works for the EA and she says a mixture of A and B, budgets are reducing year on year and it's raining more, preservation of wetlands is a consideration also but the overriding option A influences where that wetland is going to be increased, there will be other bits of the UK that will have flooding protection that works properly but that isn't going to be in the news, cos who wants to report 'flood defences working'; not a headline is it...

D as well - gambling on not having a run of very wet weather.

Of course, it isn't gambling really. You can always build a flood defence higher but it costs a lot of money to do it. So you decide what degree of protection to give - how often it is acceptable for a flood defence to be overtopped. You can call that gambling but it is a decision based on a lot of assessment of past weather patterns. Reducing the frequency of overtopping is perfectly achievable but it is expensive and means not spending money on another defence somewhere else.

hey when it comes to taking action against flooding, i'll not have a word said about the government, look at the amazing structure they've built at great expense to save the worthy folk of londiniun village

briantrumpet

Rolf F wrote:

The technical decisions aren't really political though there maybe a political steer. I'd question 'proper democratic oversight' as a 'proper thing' in this case! Democracy is all very well but you can't manage the environment effectively by this sort of democratic process. Camerons knee jerk popularity seeking response illustrates this. When you are dealing with processes that need to be planned over periods of decades, you just can't realistically (as far as I can see) involve a democratic process (beyond that that obviously the Govt can change organisations such as the EA if it sees fit). The reason climate change will never be adequately reacted to is that the general public don't give a stuff about what happens after they are dead if it means using their car less whilst they are alive and the decisions on how we react to climate change are political.

Well, perhaps Baroness Young's oft repeated quote (while head of the EA) "I’d like to see a limpet mine put on every pumping station" was purely technical. She's also the source of the "Instant wildlife: just add water" remark. I guess that's technical too. (To be fair, depending on your reading of the entire quote from the House of Lords, this might be unfair, but I can't see what any of these decisions are if not political. The entire quote is: "Some of the progress will be very immediate, particularly where we have areas that are drier than they should be and need to be wetted and, locally, where there are issues like that and it is, sort of, "Instant wildlife: just add water". With some of these groundwater issues, however, they are very, very long-term processes." I guess your estimation of whether this is a fair quote depends on your interpretation of "should": who decides how dry an area "should" be? I guess that the RSPB is going to have a different view from someone trying to make a living off the land, for instance.)

Anyway, I guess we're all agreed that, yes these are long-term processes. Which is one of the reasons decisions should be subject to proper scrutiny and oversight.

rolf_f

briantrumpet wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

The technical decisions aren't really political though there maybe a political steer. I'd question 'proper democratic oversight' as a 'proper thing' in this case! Democracy is all very well but you can't manage the environment effectively by this sort of democratic process. Camerons knee jerk popularity seeking response illustrates this. When you are dealing with processes that need to be planned over periods of decades, you just can't realistically (as far as I can see) involve a democratic process (beyond that that obviously the Govt can change organisations such as the EA if it sees fit). The reason climate change will never be adequately reacted to is that the general public don't give a stuff about what happens after they are dead if it means using their car less whilst they are alive and the decisions on how we react to climate change are political.

Well, perhaps Baroness Young's oft repeated quote (while head of the EA) "I’d like to see a limpet mine put on every pumping station" was purely technical. She's also the source of the "Instant wildlife: just add water" remark. I guess that's technical too. (To be fair, depending on your reading of the entire quote from the House of Lords, this might be unfair, but I can't see what any of these decisions are if not political.

That's my point. Her words might be a political steer but no limpet mines have been deployed on pumping stations so the actual decision remained technical!

As to making a living off the land - whilst you can certainly make a case that in this case more consideration should have been given to drainage (not my opinion but the case can be made) as far as making livings off the land goes, I think anyone who shops at a supermarket and pays less for a product than it costs to produce is in no position to claim to be a defender of rural life (not saying anyone here is guilty of that but I'm sure a lot of the lynch mob in the press are). The supermarkets screw up farming in this country everywhere and everyday - not very occasionally in localised areas.

briantrumpet

Rolf F wrote:

That's my point. Her words might be a political steer but no limpet mines have been deployed on pumping stations so the actual decision remained technical!

But you can achieve a similar effect by letting the drainage silt up: inaction having the same effect as another direct action, though less obvious in the short term. I'm tempted to post a link to a "we told you so" article by Michael Eavis (of Glastonbury fame) in the Daily Mail, but I wouldn't want to direct traffic in their direction - people might get infected with europhobitis from the encounter.

As to making a living off the land - whilst you can certainly make a case that in this case more consideration should have been given to drainage (not my opinion but the case can be made) as far as making livings off the land, I think anyone who shops at a supermarket and pays less for a product than it costs to produce is in no position to claim to be a defender of rural life. The supermarkets screw up farming in this country everywhere and everyday - not very occasionally in localised areas.

Oh yes. No argument there.

If you'd be interested why I'm interested, I used to milk cows for a living, and spent many hours over several years trying to keep reclaimed marsh fields dry enough to be grazed by cattle in the Summer (and they could be real life savers in a dry Summer). I have had my boots in the ditches, and my hands in the mud, so have had some intimate experience of how drainage can affect viability of farmland. 'Coincidentally', the EA have been promoting a scheme in my area to do pretty much exactly what they've 'allowed to happen' in Somerset. Hence my interest.