Floods

[Richard]

Our home area has been fine, we have just been up to York on Tuesday and back today. The main thing locally is the number of affected fences and trees with either limbs messed up or the whole, in most cases the whole rotten thing coming down. The floods we saw both travelling and in York were significant. In short lots of water, a bit of it in rivers. Since the passable roads were well above flood level we did not see much of the real impact. In York whole stretches were barred with locked gate keeping people out. It was only when you viewed it from a safe distance that you realised that trees rarely grown out of the middle or rivers, or that few lamp posts are similarly embedded in flowing water. Many rivers were perhaps quarter of a mile wide, some far wider It is clearly going to be a grim year for agriculture and probable just as bad or worse for many business and residential sufferers. The news is continuing heavy rain, an encounter of the darned awful kind we ran into during our return today.

[Tippon]

It’s been raining here again, and most places seem to be managing. It was on the news that one nearby town has been flooded again though. Apparently Natural Resources Wales did some tree clearing recentl of diseased trees, and the cuttings weren’t cleaned up. The rain washed them into a culvert, completely blocking it, and redirecting the now fast flowing water straight into an already flooded street.

[Dave Rice]

We used to be able to claim some money from the EU to help with floods. As we’re paying the monthly subs I assume we still can. I wonder if any Brexiteer politicians now governing the country would have the balls to apply?

[Richard]

Figures I saw suggested that the money planned for flood mitigation is now set to double. I hope the environmental disaster promoters, who’s ‘no dredging’ folly was recently reversed in the Somerset levels, clearing that areas problems will be set to work with shovels to dig out other areas. Perhaps some schemes to delay run-off from high ground and opening up drainage routes further downstream would be a sound. Simply building higher river banks does not work, a complete water management process is required. Higher river banks produce higher flood waters with more stored energy. This causes greater problems when they break. Sadly, history suggests that such problems can be partially cyclical. Standby in a few years time to hear future moans about money that was wasted on flood management.

[Ed P]

Unless the dredging takes the water straight out to sea it just passes the problem down the line. The better solutions are water meadows and flood plains in the higher reaches of water courses. Not only do they reduce the rate of run-off they provide wild life (farmer free) sanctuaries for pollinating insects.

In my youth the Somerset levels were just  flood plains. They were great places for elvers and frogs.

[Richard]

Ed, we were both promoting the same idea. Delay the run-off from high ground via a variety of methods. Rushy, marshy paddocks, small streams with a series of gathering or settlement ponds, also equipped with rushes and the like to filter out the slit that otherwise gets dropped into the drainage system. Yes, outlets need to be wide and deep enough, and you do not want fast flow. This may mandate regular dredging activity to ‘harvest’ the mud. Sadly, and stupidly this is now usually classified as industrial waste. Historically, it was considered a rich soil improver that reduced the need to spread fertilisers. That was how the Somerset levels used to be maintained. However, dealing with it at the lower levels is a symptom of failure. It has to be managed from the very start of the flow. One way that has been experimented with is the use of otherwise useless straw bails at the edge of high run off areas to slow the flow right at the start. Seeding them with rushes and other powerfully rooted mesh style plants. Then digging, not filling in staggered, upper reach holding ponds with filtered outlets that allow slowed release of the water, but retain the rich, muddy sediments. This has been shown to ‘grow’ soggy, marshy, water retention ‘paddocks’ on such hill slopes where the restricted, water and vegetation egress helps to improve the land and equally valuably hold back the early arrival of what would otherwise arrive as flood water further down stream. Of course, it requires some intense, thoughtful planning and the sort of awareness that some in the environmental and river planning departments have been quick to forget and slow to realise

[Author]

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