EA could be broken up?

I?m surprised no one has posted on this.
According to reports in Wednesday?s Guardian Lord Haskins in his report on Land management has recommended that a new agency should be set up to manage the land in England. It will be named the Land Management Agency (LMA). It will merge the Rural Development Services, English Nature in full, the Countryside Agency (Sec of State Becket not so keen on this one) and parts of Forestry Commission, British Waterways and Environment Agency.
Becket will not according to the report, guarantee the independence of the LMA from her dept. or Government.
The EA?s remit is to deals with pollution issues of Land, Air & Water in a holistic way. It is my guess is that it will be Land & Water that falls into the LMA. However, it has not been stated as yet which sections will go over.
Should we be concerned about a break up of the EA or not is my question?

Don't know Phil. What are your thoughts with your scientific background?

come back the National River Boards, all is forgiven!

1.
My comments here are purely conjecture, as I don’t know which or how much of the EA will come under the LMA.
The history of the EA dates back to the Thatcher Govt. and 1995, and the Act that brought it into being. What the Thatcher Govt. realised was that to deal with the Environment and the issue we/it faced, a holistic approach was needed. Therefore, it brought all the bodies dealing with issues that impacted on it, under the one agency. There was one it didn’t, that being Environment Health, which it left in the hands of Local Authorities. My own view was this area should have also been handed over to it as well.

However, that didn’t happen but the rest - Land, Air and Water did. This in my view was the right way to proceed, as all three are so intertwined that you cannot separate them out or compartmentalise them.
Yes Dave the Thatcher Govt. got it right! Boy that hurt saying that ;-) I’ll go further and say John Gummer was in my view the best Environmental Sec of State we’ve had to date. He understood and cared passionately about his brief. And more to the point was prepared to fight his corner in Cabinet for it. Yes there were some mistakes e.g. feeding hamburgers to his kid during the BSE crisis. That BTW was an environment health issue not an environmental issue. Gummer was and I suspect still is, a believer in the EA and the work it does.

Turning to Blair Govt. it has never shown the slightest interest in advancing the protection of the environment since it got elected. Every environmental policy it put in its manifesto to get elected has been ditched along with MP Mecher as Environment Minister. Can anybody tell me whom it is who has that job now? Because I can’t!
Really effective and high profile that Minister, isn’t he/she?

The lack of a guarantee to give the LMA independence from DEFRA gives me great cause for concern. Blair is known to be pro GM and was very p****d off at English Nature and the EA because they raised doubts about the environmental safety of realises of GMs into the wild. Interestingly, the test only looked at two of the three mediums Air and land. Water was never looked at, and whether such realises would have any impact on it and the flora and fauna that reside in and around it. One only has to look at what cultivars are living on the bankside now, to see the effects that intensive agriculture has had. Who knows how they’ll look in the 30 years time. But it’s likely as some point out, that GM super weeds will be growing on the bankside in the future. If true, they could have a great impact on the ecology of rivers, ponds and lakes by possibly reducing the numbers of insects living on them. It will probably be achieved by grafting in a toxin that is fatal or repellent to them. (Remember here that many insects that are plant pests have part of their life’s history in the aquatic/semi-aquatic environment.) Either way less suitable habitat will mean a drop in overall numbers that will be reflected in the aquatic stage of the insects and their biomass. In sort, fewer insects, means few fish! It’s that simple!

The quality of the repiarian zone flora will be diminish drastically by such plant because they out competing and shading the light out from the native ones. Science poorly understands what natural native plants suit what species of aquatic/terrestrial insect. The loss of such plants directly or indirectly would again impact greatly on such life forms and ultimately fish.

2.
The EA & EN have started to wake up to these facts and voice their concerns, voices I may add, this Govt. don’t want to hear or be heard by the general public.

The system can cope with winging environmentalist (like me) by saying they always look on the downside of everything, but when their own start to say such things, it become a real threat to them and their long-term aspersional plans. Plans as far as Blair is concerned, will be to grow all kinds of GM crops in the UK.

Based on what I’ve written above it’s a knocking bet that Land pollution problems will be taken from them.
If this is the case, who will be the champions for -
Insects that feed the fish whilst in their aquatic stage?
Natural and native Repairian zone herbage that shelter such insects?
Run off from agricultural land and the siltation of our rivers it brings?
Curves on the herbicides use to eradicate unwanted plant pests?
Intensively managed arable agricultural land is so degraded that the only thing keeping it alive is the chemical NPK put on it. This science and scientists know has a great detrimental effect (eutrophication) on all receiving waters be they running or standing. Who will continue to research, report and act on this mismanagement?

DEFRA? Maff by another name, I think not! As its only interest is maximising growth yields from the land at all costs.

If water is transferred to LMA will the assets it generates, and they are substantial, be stripped and used to support other areas that generate little or no asset base?

Will water in the form of rivers become marginalized, as they produce little in financial terms, but do incur an on cost in management for flood defence? A cost that is ever increasing year on year, as global warming starts to bite.

Dave as I wrote at the start I don’t know which part of the EA will go over to the LMA, but on balance I would much prefer the EA to stay intact and deal with the environment holistically. There is within it, staff that have mutual understanding and respect for each area it’s involved in. My greatest fear is that by splitting it up, this, over time would be lost, and we would be back to the situation we were in before, where what was left of the EA would be fighting the LMA over issues that were once accepted and acknowledged.

It would appear to me at this time, the Haskins report is more about cutting costs for the Treasury than protecting the environment. I therefore need to be convinced that it not, and it will move environmental issues on substantially for the better, not as I fear, the worse.

Nick the NRA faced much of what I’ve wrote above, with a lot less scientific understanding, would it really be a good situation to go back to?

Howler warning!
Automatic spell checkers fault, honest!
Realises should read releases and winging, whinging.
Probably other but who give a ………………..

no, not at all Phil, from my view though things were a lot simpler and less worrying in those days, probably because I didnt fully realise what was actually going on. I`ve always personally felt that the EA was too wide spread in its duties and disciplines when compaired with the River Boards, this was of course one of the major worries when we initially got the consultation papers prior to the formulation of the EA.
Will any new agency have bigger teeth, or is this another vote catcher?