By Paul Homewood
Bear with me if I return to the lack of flooding in Somerset this winter!
Environment Agency Flood Warnings as at 7th March
https://flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/warnings
Despite a very wet February, the Somerset Levels have been remarkably free of flooding so far this year.
As the Environment Agency chart above shows, there is only one red flood warning there, at Curry Moor, where river levels have been high, but have not overflowed. This was also the only red warning, when I reported a couple of weeks ago, when again there was no flooding. As far as I know, this has been the only red warning in the area in the last month.
It has been suggested that the absence of flooding is due to relatively low rainfall, compared to the rest of the country. However, this is to ignore the spate of red warnings in nearby locations in Dorset and others.
And a check of monthly data at Yeovilton, close by to the Levels, shows that Feb 2020 rainfall was 117.4mm. This is only 4mm less than the rainfall in December 2013, which set off the disastrous floods that winter. (It also needs pointing out that Nov 2013 was a particularly dry month, so there had been no accumulation beforehand).
The full report of those floods is in the Telegraph, here. But essentially, two weeks of heavy rain at the end of December 2013 combined with 19mm on New Years Day was enough to submerge some parts of the levels under several feet of water.
That meteorological set up is in fact very similar to last month, when Storm Dennis set off two weeks of heavy rain, culminating in Strom Jorge on the last day of the month. Yet we see no flooding at all.
It is very clear that the action taken by Owen Paterson that winter, following consultation with local river experts, has had a very real effect on draining the Levels.
With responsibility taken away from the Environment Agency and handed over to the newly created Somerset Rivers Authority, the rivers are now being properly dredged for the first time in years, and pumping stations properly maintained in the mouth of the Parrott Estuary.
Meanwhile silt has been removed from river banks.
Composite image of the River Parrett in Burrowbridge in the early 1960’s (top left) when dredging was carried out on a regular basis, a recent picture before the current flooding event showing the encroaching river banks (bottom left) and during the recent flooding
It is worth recalling what Christopher Booker wrote about the floods in February 2014:
But what has been emerging in recent days is another hugely important factor in bringing this disaster about: the extent to which the agency’s policy has been shaped and driven by the European Union. My co-author Dr Richard North, an expert researcher who writes the EU Referendum blog, has been combing through dozens of official documents to unravel just how it was that the agency came to adopt a strategy deliberately designed to allow flooding not just in Somerset but elsewhere in the country, all in the name of putting the interests of
“biodiversity”, “sustainability” and wildlife habitats above those of farming and people.
These have included the EU’s Natura 2000 strategy along with a sheaf of directives on “habitats”, “birds”, “water”, and not least the “floods” directive of 2007, which specifically requires certain “floodplains” to be allowed to flood. In 2008, when the EA was run by Baroness Young, this was reflected in a policy document which classified areas at risk of flooding under six categories, ranging from those in “Policy Option 1”, where flood defences were a priority, down to “Policy 6’’ where, to promote “biodiversity”, the strategy should be to “increase flooding”. The Somerset Levels were covered by Policy 6.
It was in that year that Baroness Young explained in an interview that creating wildlife habitats could be very expensive, but that by far the cheapest way was simply to allow natural flooding. As she gaily put it: “Just add water.” Around this time she was heard to say of the Somerset Levels that she would like to see “a limpet mine attached to every pumping station”.
The EA’s strategy has been driven at every point by its wish to conform with the laws and ideology of the EU – right down to the thickets of bureaucracy that make it virtually impossible, under EU waste rules, to dispose sensibly of the silt dug by locally managed drainage boards from the 1,000 miles of ditches designed to keep the Levels dry.
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March 7, 2020 at 11:18AM
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