The Mail has
made a startling discovery: the level of the River Parrett, which flows
through the Somerset Levels, passing through Burrowbridge and Bridgwater, is
very close to that recorded last January, at the height of the floods. “A county living in fear: Somerset Levels on
red alert for another round of severe flooding after storms with winds up to
93mph batter the west”, readers were told.
Flooding on the Somerset Levels
There was more: “There
were growing fears last night that the Somerset Levels could face another round
of severe flooding ... rising
water levels left locals dreading a repeat of last winter’s floods. Somerset’s
groundwater levels are now the second-highest for November since records began
45 years ago, according to the British Geological Survey (BGS) – after peaking
in the last round of floods”.
This is potentially very bad news for two groups of
people: mainly those who live on the Levels, and to a lesser extent all those
gobby pundits who spent much of last Winter telling anyone connected with the
Environment Agency (EA) that they had got it all wrong, the dastardly EU was
ordering the flooding, the rotten lefty greens were in on the conspiracy,
and all
it needed to sort the floods was dredging.
Yes, remember dredging? This would solve all
problems, especially as all
those metropolitan liberal academic types said otherwise. And we know this
because it was all in the same paper that is now telling readers how high the
river levels are, and before winter really takes hold – the Mail, which
gave a platform to serial fraud Christopher Booker last January.
“It’s the
deluded Greens who’ve left my Somerset neighbours 10ft under water” he ranted,
telling Owen Paterson that his actions “must begin with a resumption of dredging the rivers needed to carry the
water all the way to the sea”. All those EA ideas about restoring flood
plains to hold runoff water were rubbish. Dredging was what was needed. And
dredging was what they got.
The River Parrett has been dredged, at a cost of £6 million.
But already the water levels are almost up to last Winter’s peak. So what are
Booker and all the other quack doctors going to recommend now? Who will they
blame, now they have got their dredging and the river levels are still rising? And
who is going to find the £6 million for the next dredging?
Yes, if you’re going to dredge properly, it has to be done
after each flood. George Monbiot at the Guardian
estimated
that dredging might increase the percentage of flood water that the rivers
could take out of the Levels from 2% to 4%. That still leaves 96%. The larger
amount was what the EA was concentrating on. But the Mail wouldn’t listen. Now they have seen the result of their
lobbying.
Another wet spell and the Levels will flood, and badly. Hello Daily Mail.
3 comments:
And this is after what most agree was an excellent summer. August was wet, but Sept and October were very dry. Climate change is happening and as Cnut showed you cant stop nature. The folk of Somerset need to rethink their strategy and look towards the Low Countries for water management solutions, which will include thousands of acres set aside for water inundation.
Much building over low fields around Bridgwater both housing & industrial where water can no longer soak in, get more rainfall less soil to soak away & flood on edges what might happen? no expert but I see what has been covered in last few years!
Dredging has allowed water to regress much more quickly after the recent heavy rain...yes the rivers went up but they are now falling steadily.
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