Flooding - County on its knees

[Tinkerbell]

One idea put to me was the possibility of sluice gates which could be opened to flood low lying fields, should water build up and pose a danger to villages and streams further along a river. The farmers could then be compensated if crops are lost, or fields flooded, but at considerably less cost than the insurance companies paying out millions to individuals who have experienced flooding.

Sounds too easy to be practicable? But something along these lines, or overflow tanks to take excess water might just help those areas which flood time and time again. (Perhaps this system of management already exists).

Our own little town has had several businesses knocked out and homes hit a couple of weeks ago, with the threat of more to come tomorrow. And still those affected remain cheerful!!

Tinkerbell

[eeyore]

that accurately describes how water meadows used to work - however some halfwit then decided to build on a lot of them :eeK:

in oxford it still works like that - port meadow and christchurch meadow , and maudlin college grounds and sundry others flood thus protecting the city from flooding

however in the really bad floods up north this wouldnt have been sufficient as so much rain fell in such a short period of time that the run off alone flooded a lot of places =- and when it made it into the rivers there was too much water for the floodstorage , meadows etc to cope.

[Paul mabbott]

I don't think that anyone has ever suggested that 4x4s are intrinsically evil - they are and have long been very useful in certain rural situations, obviously many off road ones.

What most of us criticise is their use by rich, urban drivers for no reason other than conspicuous consumerism and wilful pollution ........

Originally Posted by Ambriel

Oooh yes but you are so bad for owning a 4x4. I wonder how many of the people who've been calling for their banning accepted help from someone in one, either a lift or a tow.

I've got a '69 Series IIa myself and I see you're in Northants where we used to live. Are you a member of ENLROC?

[Kayleigh]

Originally Posted by Ambriel

Oooh yes but you are so bad for owning a 4x4. I wonder how many of the people who've been calling for their banning accepted help from someone in one, either a lift or a tow.

I've got a '69 Series IIa myself and I see you're in Northants where we used to live. Are you a member of ENLROC?

No! I'm not a member of ENLROC. My 4X4 runs on unleaded petrol. I got it to carry hay and straw when I owned a horse I no longer own a horse but it comes in handy for bringing bags of compost(peat free of course) home from the garden centres.

[naturelover]

Originally Posted by glsammy

Yep, where I Live, I'm surrounded by low lying villages, all of which are flooded, and worse is expected. We can't get out to our usual places, without massive detours. This happens around here every 10 years or so, this year is particularly bad.
It's our unpredictable weather; how can the councils expect to cope, after all it's never rained in June before. To be fair, the rainfall has been extremely severe and continuous. Any system will struggle to cope with the volume that has fallen here recently. Apparently we've just had the worse days rainfall in 50 years, with plenty more to come.

hi just thought i would say,i live in the fens been here two years we are almost flat as you know,we have not been flooded YET.

[coventrygal]

Hello Naturelover, it rained again yesterday, with hail and thunderstorms aswell, and our garden at the back couldnt cope with the deluge of water, and it came within an inch of the back doorstep, fortunately it soon receded, only to leave all the mud on the patio, and like you say there,s more to come.
And we live on higher ground.
The main road which is used by 3 different busses was live a river as it runs downhill, and they found it difficult to use that rout until it stopped flooding there.
the fields at the bottom are flooded, these are also a flood plain, if the River Slough bursts its banks.

[Chiltern Chris]

Sorry, this is too long, but I feel better for it!

As a 'wet' ecologist I’ve a lot of experience in water level management / flood risk and I’m always interested to see what people think about it. Rivers are dynamic i.e. they change over time depending on the flow. This naturally regulates how big the river is and what wildlife lives in it. In general, the system works well if left to its own devices. However, we’ve been fiddling with rivers and their catchments in a big way, especially since the industrial revolution. Rivers have always flooded and we’ve known this for centuries. However, we build extensively in the flood plain and then increase the catchment run-off speed by putting in underfield drains, gripping the moors, covering large areas in concrete / tarmac, ploughing fields perpendicular to the rivers, vastly increasing the sediment loads of rivers, filling them with silt, putting up bridges and culverts that reduce how quickly water can drain away etc. All this makes them more prone to flooding. Then we try and constrain all this extra water and silt by putting in higher flood banks. This just makes it worse for people downstream who have to put up with more water. Another favourite is over dredging the river so it looks nice and big. The problem being is that the river was the right size for its flow before it was dredged – if you over dredge a river it will just naturally fill itself in very quickly. This just kills the wildlife, starts a perpetual management problem which cost thousands to continue and gets people complaining that the river is full of silt and needs clearing ‘like they always used to do’.

We’re in a bit of a pickle because we have 63(ish) million people on a small island, we want places to live, transport systems, agricultural systems etc. and we don’t want any of it to be disrupted even for a few days by the physical / natural processes which by their nature have extremes i.e. everything needs to be constrained to fit exactly with our requirements. Unfortunately we’ve engineered a system to service our communities, which makes flooding worse and cannot be constrained due to the cost or damage it would do. The Thames catchment alone has more than 5500km of main river and much more ordinary watercourses and a 13000km2 catchment – we don’t have the resources to manage every river, field and urban area in an extreme event. What’s worse is the expected 20% increase in winter rainfall during this century.

What have we done about it? Well, quite a lot really.

a) We’ve recognised that floods can’t be stopped only managed to do least damage. That’s why the Environment Agency and Councils don’t do ‘flood defence’ any more they do ‘flood risk management’
b) Every catchment in England and Wales (I don’t know about elsewhere) now has a Catchment Flood Risk Management Plan (done by the Environment Agency). This looks at where flooding is most likely to occur and the best way to limit it e.g. use of flood plains in agricultural areas, by-pass channels, more flood banks, flood storage areas etc.
c) Hundreds of millions are being spent on implementing these plans. More money will implement it faster, as ever it’s down to political priorities.
d) Planners aren’t supposed to allow new developments in areas most at risk from flooding.

Other improvements are needed including, i) recognising that much of the urban flooding we see is due to inadequate urban drainage systems and not due to rivers, ii) people who live in flood plain need to be told this before they buy a house iii) if any new housing must be on a flood plain it must be designed to make recovering from flooding far easier i.e. living areas above any predicted flood levels, iv) people need to understand that flood risk is generally measured as the risk over a 100 year period but that 1 in a 100 year event might happen tomorrow or in 199 years time – saying “I’ve been here 20 years and it’s never flooded so things must be getting worse” just shows that they don’t understand flood risk and not that things have necessarily got worse and v) just to make it topical, yes paving your front garden does increase flood risk for others – I’ve had to do this but I used gravel with deep soakaways which has increased infiltration through the clay under my house.

PS eeyore, Oxford is at quite a high flood risk even with the water meadows and a flood risk assessment is looking at how to reduce the risk. Have a look at this if you're interested http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk...r_1113456.pdf?

Cheers,

Chris

[Jez]

I travel by bike come rain, come snow, come galed weather. The Fastest ride to work was on my recumbent with front fairing during the storm of 2003 the wind picked up the fairing like the waltzer operator who'd comes around to spin you even faster, what a hoot. The slowest ride was the trip back. I had to remove the fairing i couldn't peddle at all and so tied it to the rear rack even then cycling was still up against the belting winds. Come Snow -it's snow problem at all the bike starts first time too on those cold frosty mornings great fun!!