Bishop Hill +++Alas Smith+++
Feb 10, 2014 Bureaucrats Environment Agency In his interview with the Today programme this morning, Environment Agency chairman Lord Smith was asked about the idea that it was the policy of the Agency to allow the Somerset Levels to flood (audio below; 7:00mins for key quotes). Smith was asked specifically about a policy document from 2008 which referred to the possibility - so-called option 6 - of allowing parts of the Levels to flood:
Policy Unit 8- Somerset Levels and MoorsPolicy option 6 – Take action to increase the frequency of flooding to deliver benefits locally or elsewhere, which may constitute an overall flood risk reduction.Note: This policy option involves a strategic increase in flooding in allocated areas, but is not intended to affect the risk to individual properties.
Smith was absolutely adamant that the Agency had no such policy:
No, that certainly hasn't been ...certainly since I've been chairman of the Environment Agency, which was after that document, which I have to confess I've never seen and never taken any notice of.
...that is certainly is not Environment Agency policy as of now, hasn't been for the last five and half years while I've been chairman...
Which is why this second document, from 2012, is such a surprise. This is the North and Mid-Somerset Flood Management Plan, put in place some four years after Chris Smith became chairman and seems to suggest (p.20) that Option 6 was in fact the Agency's preferred policy for the Levels.
The vision and preferred policy
Policy Option 6 - we will take action with others to store water or manage runoff in locations that provide overall flood risk reduction or environmental benefits. By adopting this policy and redistributing water some areas will be subject to increased flooding while others will benefit from reduced flooding. The aim is to achieve a net overall benefit. The distribution of floodwater between moors can be determined to some extent by the use of sluices and other structures on the rivers. The distribution of floodwater has developed to some extent by historical ‘accident’ rather than design. When considering the distribution of assets across the sub-area it makes sense to direct water to areas which have limited assets at risk. By redistributing floodwater, primarily from upstream of Langport to the King’s Sedgemoor Drain, the overall damage and disruption from flooding would be reduced. Other redistribution options may also be possible, although modelling has shown that technically not all options are feasible.
Oh dear.
Reader Comments (93)
Before you get too keen on Dutch engineers, remember that the flood defences for Rotterdam cost €660 million, two thirds of it spent on one gate.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering
Never mind £12 million to dredge the Somerset Levels; proper flood defence costs! If you want the EA to protect every town, village, field, coastline, estuary and railway they will need a lot more than the £1.2 billion Paterson gave them.
I think there is something to be said for the green policy of abandoning parts of the country to let nature take its course. Why not dismantle the London barrage? To most British people London is already a foreign city. The taxes we are paying to support its infrastructure are a form of foreign aid - with the difference (if it is a difference) that it is given to people who don't need it.
Why not abandon London, with Parliament, the BBC and the metropolitan chattering classes, and let the sea wash the place clean?
@ Roy, just so long as it stops short of Hounslow, and I can enjoy my new beachfront property. :o)
"... Is there any science here or do they just make it up as they go along!" --CharmingQuark
Bingo.
Roy: "...and let the sea wash the place clean?"
Not enough water in the sea, Roy. <sigh>
Roy posits the contemporary heroic challenge.
Hercules fifth Labour - Clean the Augean Stables
They had not been cleaned in 30 years, but Hercules was told to clean them completely in a single day. To do so he made two rivers bend so that they flowed into the stables, sweeping out the filth.
Bunch of climate change deniers First you complain about the scientists lying. Then you complain about the cost of combating climate change. Now the SouthWest of the UK is under water, you run an article about Environment Agency deliberately causing flooding.
Mr. Benn is a Socialist.
More like a marxist. I always thought that Benn felt guilty about his familly wealth and rather than give it away decided to fight for the good of the plebs.
Feb 10, 2014 at 4:30 PM | Stephen Richards
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You are right. I never forgave his father for closing down the pirate radios. My father held that the two great threats to the country were the Yellow Peril and Wedgewood Benn :-)
Never mind £12 million to dredge the Somerset Levels; proper flood defence costs! If you want the EA to protect every town, village, field, coastline, estuary and railway they will need a lot more than the £1.2 billion Paterson gave them.
Feb 10, 2014 at 8:47 PM | Entropic man
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By Paterson, you of course mean us taxpayers. And that £1.2 billion is only twice the annual salaries and pensions of the EA.
Paul Hudson has a post reminding us that, so far, and despite all the media frenzy, the flooding of June 2007 was orders of magnitude worse:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/UK-flooding-put-in-context
Lying toad Smithy on Newsnight claiming he has always said dredging would work – sorry, but you said it wouldn’t work two weeks ago. The EA is similar to the other EA’s in the EU, they do waste, water, industry, air, etc etc. Tougher questions were warrant IMO.
[snip]
Bureaucracies if not trained and pruned to the task at hand have a distinct tendency to run amok.
The whistleblower's blog has grown to the point where EA managers are now apparently threatening employees about talking to outsiders - and the Guardian/EA-PR are attempting to own the "EA whistleblower" tag across the new media. The simple organisational metrics are appalling and the organisation at the moment is running it's reputation on the backs of its most (hi-)visible lowest paid outdoor workers and pumping PR harder than its pumps.
The EA has trouble, lots of trouble - getting its story straight - since incompetence and lack of control have led to a sprawling conflicted and conflicting landscape of fiefdoms under the prancing Green Man banner all overseen by people too many of whom mislaid their moral compasses some time back. The funding has kept coming and the bureaucrats remorselessly promote process over delivery, meetings are "action" - and while there are no crises it doesn't matter very much.
Now there is something to do, and things that should have been done - and the leaders of this rather large organisation appear to be in part channeling the mythical crew on Douglas Adams "B Ark".
For the most part the knee-jerk MSM and politicians completely ignore the simple facts that floods happen, their effects can be in part mitigated at reasonable cost, different geographical areas require different techniques and the public body responsible has been feathering its nest and indulging idle whims - when it should have been doing routine maintenance and improving its services in line with present day best practice. Some collaboration with other bodies would not go amiss either - but the remorseless drive for extra budgets and fresh areas of influence has seemingly trumped that at every turn.
The EA is not presently fit for purpose - and knows it. It (comfortably) exists in an arbitrary no-man's land supposedly outside control of those funding it or those affected by the actions of its officials and the management "busk it" and abuse the trust that is inherent in the public service ethos. "The Agencies" need bringing back into the fold of direct control or hiving off.
I'd hazard a guess that the PR and pump budgets are not far apart (not that you could get a real figure since accounting is pitiful ) - and neither would likely be required if the clowns had done some (muddy) routine maintenance and showed a smidgin of transparency. Institutionally the EA seem incapable of transparency since intrigue and subterfuge seem ingrained - some officials get a warm glow stamping "Classified" on documents or pretending the document doesn't exist...
If you've been sold a Flood Management Plan (FMP) alongside an EU Floods Directive and/or a Met Office prediction of milder, drier winters over the last 10 years, there is a chance you may have been mis-sold but there's absolutely no chance that you can reclaim £1,000s in compensation.
Here at Bradstone & Crookes, we are always here to help you and our friendly, helpful staff will deal with your case from start to finish, but we doubt that you will be able to remove those unelected EU bureaucrats and officials at the Environment Agency who are fully responsible for this flooding farce.
SteveB
heh... there's going to be quite a lot more finger pointing when the waters subside. It'll be interesting to see if it translates into a more robust examination of the actions of public bodies and politicians - quite a bit of damage limitation heavy lifting going on at the moment. Doubt the UK MSM are actually up to the job though - there are however a few very annoyed and determined people in Somerset that might yet spring a surprise on EA officials - as might a few well heeled Thames-side dwellers.....
The BBC-GMG crew are pumping hard that's for sure - two pro EA articles by Hariban in one day and GuardianECO drones will be filing RSI claims from Twitter clicking.
So global warming is in a sense man made. Human hubris and folly leaves us vulnerable to what nature is dishing out. And then those who were responsible for us becoming more vulnerable pass the blame on to CO2.
If a politician's mouth has two sides they will use both. It is the principle role of the electorate that people such as this never draw a paycheck from the public coffers. That we fail so often at this simple task can easily be blamed on public education which actually ensures this failure.
I am sure I read a few years ago that the Thames barrier had been raised many times, not to keep the water out, but to keep it in. Suddenly, we have a stretch of the Thames from Oxford to Shepperton that is now overflowing. I sincerely hope that this is not the result of a decision to close lock gates, at arbitrary times, from the Barrier back up the river through Shepperton, Boulter's Lock etc. How can we find out?
Entropic Man
Rotterdam's defences would appear to be money well spent, and not that expensive when taken in context. According to Wikipedia
Rotterdam (/ˈrɒtərdæm/; Dutch: [ˌrɔtərˈdɑm] ( )) is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam constructed in 1270 on the Rotte River, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre. Its strategic location at the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta on the North Sea and at the heart of a massive rail, road, air and inland waterway distribution system extending throughout Europe is the reason that Rotterdam is often called the "Gateway to Europe".
Entropic,
You actually have a point. I'm all for diverting the HUNDREDS of billions of pounds we are p1ssing, quite literally, in to the wind in to something tangible and something that will provide real benefit to the entire UK like flood defences.
You see, it's all about priorities.
Mailman
On the plus side, now that the Met office has predicted more floods we can confidently expect the opposite.
Last April Slingo told us we were heading for freezing, drier weather. Now she claims that she meant milder and wetter. This is the last refuge of the scientific scoundrel, an organisation that has lost touch with reality: http://notrickszone.com/2014/02/10/global-laughing-stock-uk-met-office-lost-touch-with-reality-corrupted-valuable-british-institution/
They tell us this is the wettest weather since 1766. So the weather was wetter in 1766, long before their 'man-made global warming' was supposed to have started. How then is the recent flooding irrevocably attributable to 'man-made global warming'? Fantasists.
The east Anglian fenland has coped with living and farming below sea level for hundreds of years. How do they cope? After all they don't seem to have the same crisis in Wisbech as they have in Boroughbridge. Well, they have washes. Huge areas that are allowed to flood and store water until it can be pumped out via Denver or one of the other great sluices. Welney wash is a wonderful example and I would encourage a visit if you are in the UK. The land is farmed in the summer, and in winter it can be flooded as needed. It is home to a vast amount of birdlife including some of the worlds largest populations of Whooper and Berwicks swans. It is a truly breathtaking area. It is a productive cattle area in the Summer, and in winter cattle graze the Dykes safe above the water ( the drainage canals are also confusingly called dykes locally) So the people of the fens have learned to live on a land which is always at risk of flooding. They do not try and fight it, but they manipulate the flooding and don't try and pretend all flooding can be prevented by dredging etc. They should be an inspiration to the rest of the country, and especially the Somerset levels.
Feb 11, 2014 at 9:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterEd Smith
"They tell us this is the wettest weather since 1766. So the weather was wetter in 1766"
Not necessarily, I'm under the impression 1766 is the earliest historic weather record, though I'm having difficulty locating the actual data, MET office data only goes back to 1860.
Wettest since 1766 = wettest since records began
Here's some data for context, courtesy of ukweaherworld
Wettest seasons on record for England and Wales: W for winter, S for summer, A for autumn
A 502.7 2000
A 455.8 1852
A 438.6 1960
A 424.1 1935
W 423.0 1914-15
W 420.9 1989-90
W 418.3 1876-77
W 415.6 1994-95
S 409.7 1912
S 409.2 1879
A 402.4 1770
A 400.6 1772
A 399.1 1875
A 398.7 1768
A 396.9 1799
A 396.8 1976
S 396.3 1829
A 394.3 1872
A 391.1 1903
W 388.3 1993-94
A 387.9 1825
A 384.6 1841
W 380.6 1868-69
A 379.1 1880
A 378.9 1773
A 378.1 1954
A 377.9 1974
A 377.8 1794
A 377.5 1944
W 374.3 1959-60
S 375.2 2012
W 373.5 1915-16
W 372.8 2013-14 up to 9th Feb
Garethman @ 9:22
That description is one that would be recognised in Burrowbridge pre-2005ish. After that, the malign policies of the EA kicked in - with a bunch of other quangos and NGOs hiding under its skirts.
They tell us this is the wettest weather since 1766. So the weather was wetter in 1766, long before their 'man-made global warming' was supposed to have started. How then is the recent flooding irrevocably attributable to 'man-made global warming'? Fantasists.
Feb 11, 2014 at 9:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterEd Smith
In fact more extreme weather could be said to point to colder not warmer weather, as the difference between the temps at the poles and the equator increases then the weather gets worse.
LIA again maybe.
Garethman
Most of the long term residents of the Somerset Levels I've seen and heard interviewed accept that flooding goes with the territory. Their complaint seems to be that they warned the EA that the level of flooding they are now experiencing was inevitable because the EA put wildlife first. They could say to Lord Smith since you preferred wildlife to people, let wildlife protect you (from the political fallout).* Also I have seen references recently (can't remember where now) to areas where the manmade drains have been maintained and dredged in the traditional way and there the flooding is not exceptional and has drained in the usual way.
* Possibly apocryphal comment after the Highland Clearances As one Highland landowner reportedly replied to his would-be recruiters: “Since you have preferred sheep to men, let sheep defend you.” But it seems appropriate here as returning the levels to nature will ultimately result in moving people out.
What a strange situation, we know that back in the days of the Baroness somebody stopped dredging using an EU directive as an excuse. But Flooding the Somerset levels which is a direct result must, by definition, be in breach of the "Human Rights" of the people, a thing that is boasted of by both the UN and the EU. We are not talking here of them being housed recently on an obvious "flood plain" but land reclaimed centuries ago. Again we know that some flood plains have in recent times been built on with the permission of the "planners". And this is what we are getting for our votes and money, lousy governance especially by unaccountable people like Smith, not elected just chosen and left to damage our Country and People at will without let or hindrance!
My take on the current policies of the Environment Agency is that they amount to Environmental Appeasement.
How much of the decision to let parts of the Levels flood was based on advice from the Met Office that water was going to be in short supply and we were going to have Mediterranean summers?
Flood water storage is, I suppose, the latest idea for flood mitigation. It is a poor idea. Flood reservoirs silt up so they are not maintenance free. and you still have to get rid of the water.
Dredging on the other hand increases river velocity and capacity, by removing weed and silt, so reducing flood reaction times. This in itself vastly increases flood protection. Dredging is an ongoing maintenance job not a once every 20 year exercise.
Another maintenance job ignored for years is repair and maintenance of coastal groynes, most of which have rotted to nothing. Groynes collect sand and gravel to increase beach area and provide material for the sea to form into storm berms that prevent cliff erosion.
Bureaucracies are great, aren't they? - until you actually need something done.
The EA, ably led by political cronies its entire life, has been caught with its pants down. They must have had some hints about how bad things could be from flooding in 2000 and 2007. Very few ditches are maintained by councils any more. You only have to look around locally to see that many are overgrown/blocked and unlikely to perform as required. After a flood they are maintained for a year or two then left until the next flood when the council are surprised that the water is not running away ... again.
As my great-granny used to say 'the bourns* rise every seven years'. (referring to flooding in her village)
* intermittent stream esp. in chalk geography
Ian Neill above gets closest to it all. We are fortunate in that the UK coast has a large tidal range (5 - 10m) and the water must get to the sea - via the rivers, canals, sluices etc. None of our land is below mean sea level and at low tide everything flows to the sea. It was obvious and evidenced (U-tube) that in Somerset the sluices (which let the water out at low tide and prevent it comi9ng back at high tide) were abandoned. The Thames also must flow freely to the sea. What is holding the water back? The barrier should only be closed at times of exceptional high tide. Are the locks and weirs being co-ordinated properly? Probably they will have to be modified to allow a greater flow of water in future BUT IT MUST GET TO THE SEA.
Chris Smith has been rubbish in ever job he has had in government , he was for instance a awful sport ministry .
So he is just carrying on has he always has , feet up , cash in pocket and lots of self-stroking .
"lots of self-stroking"
Does he not have a white Persian..?
Jeremy Poynton
I'm not surprised that labour coats make up half the EA budget. Most of their work is labour intensive. It also means that the choice between building new infrastructure and maintaining the existing system becomes even more difficult as budget cuts bite.
It is quite possible that political pressure to be seen to be "doing something" after past flooding distorted EA priorities.
SandyS
Context is all. The Treasury's existing system for allocating funds requires an eightfold cost:benefit ratio for flood defence spending.
This makes it town- centric. Protecting a large industrial city such as Rotterdam makes good economic sense, spending €660 million to protect a multi-billion euro infrastructure investment.
Spending £12 million to protect the Somerset Levels under the current rules would need a garuanteed return of £96 million.This is unlikely to come from thirty square miles of farmland and three villages.
There's also the difficulty that flood defences often transfer the problem, rather than solve it. I've just read a report that the Jubilee River has saved Windsor and Maidenhead from flooding, by channelling the water into Datchet.
Feb 10, 2014 at 7:58 PM | Alex Cull
Thanks for this (and the others) Alex.
I've analysed flood events, and designed flood mitigation measures.
I do NOT believe anyone could manage a flood event as it was happening as Policy 6 describes.
Any more than you can manage a battle field engagement as it was happening.
The flow rates involved, the dynamic flow of water, and what effect opening or closing a sluice gate has is all too dynamic to possibly manage live.
Unless.... the rains in England are very different (uniform distribution over large areas) to the rains in QLD Australia. Then perhaps it's plausible, but you'd need extra large sluices in order to make a difference, otherwise it's just pretending.
6:45 PM Entropic man
I suspect you'll find the EA labour bill is skewed well away from the muddy hi-viz footsoldiers of the "Ops Teams"
Your seemingly gushing uncritical defence of the entire EA seems to fly in the face of rather a lot of observed and unequivocal shortcomings in that organisation - publicly aired by a number of people who probably know better than you - its own workforce.
As to your numbers for the EA - you make the simple mistake of believing what the EA execs and Smiffy spout - which would be understandable if they could keep their story straight - but they can't.
You work for The Guardian and I claim my £5
2:18 AM Greg Cavanagh
In many cases you are undoubtedly correct - flows outside the design parameters of the drainage system result in a flood .... Trouble is as far as the responsible public body is concerned the capacity of the system is presently and deliberately undefined and unequivocally reduced...
It Somerset and across the EA's "estate" it would help considerably though if the measurement systems were considerably less sparse and the publicly owned data was integrated and accessible in a way that enabled 21st century IT assets to get at both live readings and archived data in a sensible fashion. This is not the case.
I've been following the Somerset debacle since it's just down the road - and a regular comment from those affected has been "what's going on?" - there is no Google Earth / Maps "mash up" that takes data from level sensors, integrates it with met data and precision geodetic control etc. that is accessible - yet there are dozens of people cranking the handles on the PR pumps providing inane irrelevant static via twitter etc. A working overall situation monitor would inject a bit of transparency into what's going on - and that is lacking at the moment.
Have you seen a working integration between rain radar and flows through a system ? (anybody?)
tomo, this kind of common sense is utterly subversive. Integrating technical and historical information to manage big events like floods?
It can only lead to dancing. :)