| Re: Just asking for trouble.
What worries me about the BBC’s 24/7 coverage of the floods is that they’re not coming up with any insight into what’s going on other than to say rainfall has been unprecedented.
I’ve even heard people from the farming world saying what’s needed is a return to “good, old-fashioned” land drainage. The bloke I was listening to reckoned that fields are flooded because ditches aren’t cleared and rivers aren’t dredged.
But isn’t the problem that for years we’ve been creating a countryside that sheds water rather than holding it? Moving water downhill as quickly as possible has helped make Gloucester and Oxford how they are this week.
What’s needed is a countryside that can behave like a sponge and hold water. That would reduce floods during wet periods and keep rivers flowing when there’s a drought. |