Floody Madness!

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Floody Madness!

100% correct.

So the fact that most river in England have not been dredged for 30+ years has nothing to do with flooding so every river in England is still able to carry the same capacity of water as they were when they were dredged and in the 30 years we have built so much more on flood pains and increased the size of our cities and towns and the run of is vastly more than it was, and the rivers still have the same capacity as before..yeah right! :wh

Head waters play a big part of flood defence true.. but if you have 2 foot of mud/silt in a river bed, that's 2 foot of water that has to go some where else.

You think 1700 reduction in EA staff is going to make a difference in flood defence ( and fisheries ) then take a look at this site and see where the money really go's and is wasted and the fraud committedmg:
http://http://www.insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk/

Pay particular attention to the diagram showing land area and staff numbers and budget of the UK EA compared to the USA and our European cousins EA's

When your being scammed/conned always follow the money, in this case about £1.2billion of OUR money. The EA is dinosaur and needs a root and branch clear out of corrupt and lazy idle paper shufflers and wasters..alot like Parliament

davieboy said:

So the fact that most river in England have not been dredged for 30+ years has nothing to do with flooding so every river in England is still able to carry the same capacity of water as they were when they were dredged and in the 30 years we have built so much more on flood pains and increased the size of our cities and towns and the run of is vastly more than it was, and the rivers still have the same capacity as before..yeah right! :wh

Head waters play a big part of flood defence true.. but if you have 2 foot of mud/silt in a river bed, that's 2 foot of water that has to go some where else.

You think 1700 reduction in EA staff is going to make a difference in flood defence ( and fisheries ) then take a look at this site and see where the money really go's and is wasted and the fraud committedmg:
http://http://www.insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk/

Pay particular attention to the diagram showing land area and staff numbers and budget of the UK EA compared to the USA and our European cousins EA's

When your being scammed/conned always follow the money, in this case about £1.2billion of OUR money. The EA is dinosaur and needs a root and branch clear out of corrupt and lazy idle paper shufflers and wasters..alot like Parliament

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Its not a like for like comparison.

Losing your job these days ain't funny.

Additionally all these guys blowing the whistle seem to be anonymous , doesn't anyone else ever moan about their Boss.

One decent flood in one major river will move more tonnage of silt than an hundred diggers can in a year. Take a look at the millions of gallons of floodwater lying on the floodplain during a major flood event and then calculate how deep you would have to dig the river channel to make any difference.. As it happens most rivers where never seriously dredged either 30 years or 300 years ago and in any case rivers are not supposed to function as storage reservoirs for excess floodwater. That’s why we have water meadows and why they must be protected.
The ' inside the EA ' website is the anonymous rantings of a disgruntled ex employee and should be treated with considerable caution. If a fraction of the smears against his former colleagues were true then surely the guy would put his name to his claims?
Read the Monbiot Guardian piece I linked to or even Charles Clover in the Sunday Times last weekend. The message is the same...We can't dredge our way out of flooding chaos but we can dredge and build our way into it !

Correct Martin but nor can we develop our way out of over population either, as suggested by the Govt/party you once were a member of.
For every action there's a reaction and in the case of an overpopulated isle you get over development that manifests itself in flooding, water stress, outstripping of natural resources and services.

Another factor to consider is the change in agricultural practices from organic to inorganic. Soils rich in humus with good soil structure hold water like a sponge and provide a buffering effect. Todays soils, inorganically farmed for many years, don't have the ability to hold excess water, which runs off freely, quite often taking much of the topsoil with it.

It may not be a major contributor to flooding (although I suspect it is, personally), but it certainly isn't helping matters.

Spot on Rob. Much modern agricultural practices have a lot to answer for and ploughing fields without thinking about drainage isa big problem in spate river valleys like the Wye.
As regards reasons for population growth triggering higher housing numbers. Well you have to put into the mix an ageing population as medical science has us living longer, a marked rise in single households, economic activity moving southwards, higher divorce rates, lower occupancy rates and yes immigration, but only when you net off the 3 million plus Britons living in other EU countries.
But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good rant !

No ranting here! as for your response of saying the rivers were never seriously dredged 30 or 300 years ago????

Mmm not according to these people and they should know wouldn't you say
http://http://www.dredgingtoday.com/2013/07/22/uk-environmental-organisations-warn-of-dredging-triple-whammy/#.Ut7bynlFC1s

As for you last post/or should that be rant! well it good to see yet another Labour ok EX mp has admitted the cock up over immigration that you allowed to happen to prolong your stay in office:wh

And as for a good flood removing more silt in a year than 100 digger HAHAH!
By that pathetic reply you clearly no nothing about how a river works, if were that simple there would be no silting problems ever would there! and you hit on the problem of depth of river channel so you seem to know there is a silting up factor in play here!

Oh and quoting Moonbat is hardly the best source for unbiased environmental matters, he wants all hill farmers off the land so that tells you how out of touch with reality Moonbat ismg:

I would say go back to politics Martin where you can't do any real damage but they would be factually wrong, and on that I will leave this discussion with a Disraeli quote;
Inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination.

Could it be better to build strategically placed reservoirs along our rivers that flood regularly. Keep them empty and then fill them up by draining or pumping excess water off the rivers during flooding. Then empty them again slowly back into the rivers during drought spells in the summer keeping the levels up. Solves both problems of flooding and droughts?

DavieBoy
Shame you have to dress up your flawed arguments by resorting to personal abuse behind the cloak of anonymity but, as you can imagine, it's water off a ducks back and says all we need to know about you...
If you don't like Monbiot's analysis, because he's a lefty, then read Charles Clover in last weeks Sunday Times. Same argument but from a Conservative and acknowledged expert on conservation...kinda tells you something eh???

I am very much with Martin on this and DavieBoy needs to do some background reading beyond Farmers Weekly or wherever he is getting his facts.

After every recent recent major flood - such as summer 2010 and again this winter I have heard the oft repeated chorus that "we need the rivers to get a darned good dredging" to rid us of this flooding menace. Most recently it was farmers down in the Somerset Levels where water has now stood on land for several weeks - an area which, the last time i checked, is grazing marshes historically prone to sustained flooding (and extremely rare and valuable ecologically as a result)...so perhaps an area where it wasnt a good idea to plough up the grazing lands to plant crops there if you are going to get stroppy once every while when it floods and the crops fail.

Flooding of properties is the more serious concern and that is where maybe the land managers, farmers and town planners need to take responsibility for flood storage. For example, farmers installing field drains reduces flood storage and increases rate of run-off into rivers. Planners allowing the concreting or tarmacing over of large swathes of urban areas (made worse by cramming properties onto tiny plots and people turning their gardens into driveways) is also a cause of flash floods.

Dredging is not the answer - comprehensive flood-plain management is what is needed. This should include retaining floodplains where floods are allowed to happen. This is what the EA should be providing - except their decisions and advice gets over-ridden by landowners, developers and planners. Too many vested interests would rise up against all the unnecessary regulations whilst the EA itself has a poverty of ambition to actually make a real difference by fighting such interests. The mantra is of flexibility, voluntary agreement, mitigation. I would bet on it being more likely that places like the Somerset Levels - one of the most important wetland areas in the UK and of international significance - get damaged by dredging rather than any meaningful catchment wide restrictions on floodplain development ever being implemented.

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markg said:

Could it be better to build strategically placed reservoirs along our rivers that flood regularly. Keep them empty and then fill them up by draining or pumping excess water off the rivers during flooding. Then empty them again slowly back into the rivers during drought spells in the summer keeping the levels up. Solves both problems of flooding and droughts?

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In principle this seems a great idea. It is already the case that many water abstractors (eg farm irrigation reservoirs) can only take water during the winter or when flows are high - especially in lowland catchments prone to droughts. Politically though, major landowners or local communities do not like large-scale reservoir proposals. Noise and inconvenience during construction, loss of local landscape character etc. For almost 30 years now, there has been a plan for a reservoir in SW Oxfordshire that still hasnt received agreement to be built. Proposals can fail if they rely just on spate/flood flows to fill them - because there could be 5-10 year periods or longer where such events do not occur and they would be unused white elephants. At other times - and attempts will always been made to secure their use during normal conditions also - their development becomes an abstraction issue - with knock-on impacts upon the donor river downstream.

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The bad one said:

Correct Martin but nor can we develop our way out of over population either, as suggested by the Govt/party you once were a member of.
For every action there's a reaction and in the case of an overpopulated isle you get over development that manifests itself in flooding, water stress, outstripping of natural resources and services.

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Totally agree. This is why free movement within the EU is flawed if over-populated countries such as ours receive large-scale net immigration. Took me a while to see it, but i now see membership of the EU as a major threat to UK landscapes and ecosytems. Hope to emigrate to France before it gets too bad ! Seriously though, I could also do without all the red tape and those awful politically-correct career politicians too.

Look, these floods have absolutely nothing to do with agricultural practices, river management or anything else.

The only reason the rivers have spread out onto their historic winter flood plains after weeks of heavy rain is because God's been offended by homosexuals. That UKIP man was absolutely right.

I expect the reason the Upper Thames round here is so high is simply because of a longer than necessary lingering glance between two carpers with their shirts off last summer.

If only every angler would maintain strict hetrosexuality at all times, all of these rivers would be chuntering along smoothly at their optimum levels without any of these problems.

Love it Maceo!
Here's one just for Davieboy and anyone else deluded enough to think the Ukip crazies are the answer to anything
Married gays to tour drought-hit countries

"Could it be better to build strategically placed reservoirs along our rivers that flood regularly. Keep them empty and then fill them up by draining or pumping excess water off the rivers during flooding. Then empty them again slowly back into the rivers during drought spells in the summer keeping the levels up. Solves both problems of flooding and droughts?"

CHUB ON THE BLOCK:-
In principle this seems a great idea. It is already the case that many water abstractors (eg farm irrigation reservoirs) can only take water during the winter or when flows are high - especially in lowland catchments prone to droughts. Politically though, major landowners or local communities do not like large-scale reservoir proposals. Noise and inconvenience during construction, loss of local landscape character etc. For almost 30 years now, there has been a plan for a reservoir in SW Oxfordshire that still hasnt received agreement to be built. Proposals can fail if they rely just on spate/flood flows to fill them - because there could be 5-10 year periods or longer where such events do not occur and they would be unused white elephants. At other times - and attempts will always been made to secure their use during normal conditions also - their development becomes an abstraction issue - with knock-on impacts upon the donor river downstream
ME:-
There would be problems getting permission and public agreement where to build them for sure. But, if it could be proved that it would solve the problem of both floods and drought , would the public be that against it. Could they be underground reservoirs? I have seen this done in a town where two underground reservoirs were built to take away and store flood water that kept flooding the draining system and the water fed back into the water grid, and it worked. Could the reservoirs be lined with solar panels so, when empty they were providing cheap electricity if not underground? I don't know, just something that comes to mind however, I just see it as a long term way of solving the problems. Would be expensive to build but, they would last for a very long time if not forever with a little maintenance. If it was a permanent solution, worth the expense I think..

markg said:

"Could it be better to build strategically placed reservoirs along our rivers that flood regularly. Keep them empty and then fill them up by draining or pumping excess water off the rivers during flooding. Then empty them again slowly back into the rivers during drought spells in the summer keeping the levels up. Solves both problems of flooding and droughts?"

CHUB ON THE BLOCK:-
In principle this seems a great idea. It is already the case that many water abstractors (eg farm irrigation reservoirs) can only take water during the winter or when flows are high - especially in lowland catchments prone to droughts. Politically though, major landowners or local communities do not like large-scale reservoir proposals. Noise and inconvenience during construction, loss of local landscape character etc. For almost 30 years now, there has been a plan for a reservoir in SW Oxfordshire that still hasnt received agreement to be built. Proposals can fail if they rely just on spate/flood flows to fill them - because there could be 5-10 year periods or longer where such events do not occur and they would be unused white elephants. At other times - and attempts will always been made to secure their use during normal conditions also - their development becomes an abstraction issue - with knock-on impacts upon the donor river downstream
ME:-
There would be problems getting permission and public agreement where to build them for sure. But, if it could be proved that it would solve the problem of both floods and drought , would the public be that against it. Could they be underground reservoirs? I have seen this done in a town where two underground reservoirs were built to take away and store flood water that kept flooding the draining system and the water fed back into the water grid, and it worked. Could the reservoirs be lined with solar panels so, when empty they were providing cheap electricity if not underground? I don't know, just something that comes to mind however, I just see it as a long term way of solving the problems. Would be expensive to build but, they would last for a very long time if not forever with a little maintenance. If it was a permanent solution, worth the expense I think..

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Costs would be far to high to make it financially viable the cost of the land alone then construction and running costs. It may be a solution but the costs involved would kill it off in my opinion.

Areas that receive floodwaters and then release the water gradually helping to protect areas downstream also exist in nature - as marshes, bogs, fens. Unfortunately farmers have been subsidised and encouraged for generations to drain and plough them up.

Another natural storage area is aquifers - down here in the south we cant get enough potable water from them to meet our needs without trashing the chalk streams or rivers that depend on them. Perhaps if rainwater wasnt channelled off to sea as fast as possible these aquifers could re-fill more effectively too - if water was allowed to stand on the floodplains a bit longer. In truth, many rivers have become disconnected from their floodplains except during extreme flooding events as we have seen lately.

chub_on_the_block said:

Areas that receive floodwaters and then release the water gradually helping to protect areas downstream also exist in nature - as marshes, bogs, fens. Unfortunately farmers have been subsidised and encouraged for generations to drain and plough them up.

Another natural storage area is aquifers - down here in the south we cant get enough potable water from them to meet our needs without trashing the chalk streams or rivers that depend on them. Perhaps if rainwater wasnt channelled off to sea as fast as possible these aquifers could re-fill more effectively too - if water was allowed to stand on the floodplains a bit longer. In truth, many rivers have become disconnected from their floodplains except during extreme flooding events as we have seen lately.

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Did you know that the London aquifer if full to capacity since 2000 and is the cause of major flooding problems in london's deep basements and tube lines. Since so much industry has stopped drawing off water with wells in London it has gone from 70% full in 62 to 100%full in 2000. If you are interested in the ground water situation in the London . Google london's ground water there is plenty of information on the subject.

martinsalter said:

Love it Maceo!
Here's one just for Davieboy and anyone else deluded enough to think the Ukip crazies are the answer to anything
Married gays to tour drought-hit countries

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Who said Ukip had the answer's clearly you politicians don't/didn't. the EA don't have the answer in its current form, your alliance and kneeling at the Green alter certainly doesn't have the answer.

The only real answer is to pass law that stops ALL developing of flood plains.
but seeing as All politcal parties are in the pocket of big business/corporate for their party funding thats not going to happen,is it Martin.

Oh and disband the EA and put in place a national organisation that is accountable to the people who pay for it, not the quango thats staffed and managed by self serving politcal appointed lifers who little to justify the huge money its given to do a job its ill equipped and able to do.

Your sad little attempt at labelling me a UKIPer shows why you were ill equipped at politics Martin, you've gone from Red to watermelon very quickly but then all lot of th comrades are really all watermelons dressed as reds like Lucas eh!:wh

davieboy said:

Who said Ukip had the answer's clearly you politicians don't/didn't. the EA don't have the answer in its current form, your alliance and kneeling at the Green alter certainly doesn't have the answer.

The only real answer is to pass law that stops ALL developing of flood plains.
but seeing as All politcal parties are in the pocket of big business/corporate for their party funding thats not going to happen,is it Martin.

Oh and disband the EA and put in place a national organisation that is accountable to the people who pay for it, not the quango thats staffed and managed by self serving politcal appointed lifers who little to justify the huge money its given to do a job its ill equipped and able to do.

Your sad little attempt at labelling me a UKIPer shows why you were ill equipped at politics Martin, you've gone from Red to watermelon very quickly but then all lot of th comrades are really all watermelons dressed as reds like Lucas eh!:wh

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No politics please.