Monday
Feb172014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Somerset stops pumping
Feb 17, 2014 Climate: WG2 The Western Daily News has reported that the huge Dutch pumps that were brought in to try to contain the floodwaters on the Somerset levels have been switched off.
[The pumps'] installation on Friday has resulted in damage to the riverbank...A spokesman for the [Environment Agency] said: "We have had to stop pumping because of the damage to the bank on the River Parett".
One wonders whether this is a case of "the river bank might collapse and let even more water out" or whether it's a case of "that's damaging to environment and will have to stop".
Reader Comments (27)
Is this because the undredged river does not have the capacity to flow the amount of water the Dutch pumps are shifting? Need more info really, and something tells me the EA will not be forthcoming.
Probably posted before, but for all those who liked and/or followed James Delingpole in the Daily Telegraph (which has now turned poisonously leftie), he can be found here, where he is causing a well-deserved stir:
http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/James-Delingpole
This is no reason to stop pumping. Surely, if they have Dutchmen in attendance there, any one of them knows how to stick his finger in the dyke in order to plug a hole.
Any sexual innuendo was not intended, though your attention to fairy tales, often the preserve of the climate community, is.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
I spy panic.
From 1 minute 30 onwards in this youtube video it looks like the outfall of the pipes has washed away a bit of the River Parrett river bank directly underneath them.
Imo there is something funny about the Dunball sluice. I've found a comment from 2012 that suggested it was being operated wrongly and that the drainage board wanted pumps in KSD to evacuate water even when it is tide locked. Parrett Meeting Minutes – 12th June 2012
The output of the sluice gate is reported as 69 tonnes a second but I've seen nothing that shows it in action.
I suspect that, the EA having shown its true colours, the Somerset farmers are not going to have anything to do with them in future, but will commence dredging and draining on their own as soon as possible, utterly ignoring any EU diktats; some might even install pumps. They will do this with full complicit support of the community, and woe betide any policeman or other official who feels it incumbent to interfere.
This message may well have already percolated around the countryside, and it would not surprise me to see or hear of other communities taking it upon themselves to do the work they had previously left to “du gubmint”.
So reposition these pumps to the coast and pump direct into the sea. And open the sluices that are now closed keeping the water on the levels Another EA failure.
No doubt the EA were worried that the bank erosion under the outlet pipes would endanger the stability of the sluice gates. Now who could possibly have foreseen that?
What would/will be interesting, is if farmers do take it into their own hands to arrange future pumping and drainage/dredging.
It would be a wonderful PR own goal for the environment agency to use EU legislation to sue a farmer, or housing collective, who have arranged their own pumping for the purposes of flood defence. Imagine the headlines.
OK Some numbers
8 x VanHecke diesel pumps 15.5m^3/sec (from here )
ROF pumping 1.6m^3/sec (historical but I thought to put it in)
The Western Daily Press article linked says 7 million tons of water a day which is more than 80m^3/sec
The video caption:
480 tons water per minute (8 m^3/sec) per pump
3840 tons / minute for 8 pumps (64m^3/sec) for array
Who to believe ? How may double decker buses or Post Office Towers is that?
One has to wonder did VanHecke's guys take the pump siting decision or was that done by you know who? - think we should be told :-)
@stuck-record
...It would be a wonderful PR own goal for the environment agency to use EU legislation to sue a farmer, or housing collective, who have arranged their own pumping for the purposes of flood defence. Imagine the headlines.
We've already had this in Australia. There, the problem was tree and scrub clearance around houses, to cut back the risk of damage when forest fires started. This was normal practice, and had enabled houses to survive many fires before.
The environmentalists stopped this, and when the residents fought they were taken to court and fined. Some may have been imprisoned - I don't know enough about the detail.
And then of course a forest fire started, and all their houses burnt down....
"..had to stop pumping because of the damage to the bank"
Which means they'll have to bail it out!
I'll get my coat.
tomo
Olympic swimming pools are the preferred measure, I think. Or an area the size of Wales.. :-)
@jamesp
Wembly Stadiums according to the Western Daily Press - but then they are never shy of rushing to hyperbollock hype :-)
BBC have an interview with EA folk here
More numbers 2m^3/sec per pump x 8 = 16m^3/sec
So BS abounds in the matter ... whence is the provenance ? The EA have some previous.....
The resurrecting the practice of tarring and feathering should be considered in all localities.
Paul in Sweden
some are advocating the return of a practice prevalent in your southerly neighbors Denmark some time back - namely bog burials for failed witch doctors and leaders.
I might not be renowned scientist or media pundit, but even I can see that having a pipe discharging at high volume at height over an earthen bank is not going to be a good idea, let alone a series of pipes. However, I am just a nobody who only does such things as – PAY TAXES TO PAY FOR THESE MORONS’ EXCECUTIVE WAGES!
So much for the EA employees on the ground doing such a fantastic job as plastered all over the media.
How can they be qualified to do their jobs and NOT know that this would happen? Have they never seen a big pump before?
If you discharge water over a soil bank, said soil will go away. Phone nearest quarry, order several truckloads of rock, tip at discharge point, sorted.
This is just an unbelievable level of incompetence.
Smoking gun
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10644101/How-Somerset-Levels-river-flooded-after-it-was-not-dredged-for-decades.html
This historic photograph reveals how a lack of dredging has halved the width of a key river on the Somerset Levels.
The picture taken in the 1960s shows a wide expanse of water passing through Burrowbridge with plenty of room for water levels to rise.
But a matching image taken shortly before the recent floods reveals how silt and debris have gradually built up and extended towards the centre of the river.
The photos tell it all and excessive rain, well what excessive rain.
A spokesman for the FLAG group has got hold of meticulous rainfall records for the area around the Parrett and Tone for the last 20 years.
They reveal between December 1993 and Febuary 1994 around 20 inches of rain fell - five inches less than during the same time this year.
A spokesman for the group said: "So roughly the same rainfall but far more flooding now.
"What has changed? Dredging seems to be the biggest obvious difference between then and now."
But the EA will carry on regardless.
Birds-eye view of stopped pumps + scour damage
Not unreasonable to ask who decided on the outfall placement eh?
Willem , you mean the rest of the pipe is in the yard in Holland? hoopverdommer! (With apologies to any Dutch readers)
Hang on – you mean to say these pumps are situated next to the sluice gates? Gates that appear to have a wider opening than the inflowing drain? Gates that, if opened, would allow the water to drain out quite naturally to sea for most of the day, from a drain that is higher than the levels. So… silly question, perhaps: are there any pumps in the levels that pump the floodwater up into the drain?
tomo,
Thanks for that aerial view image. It's the first one I've seen that shows the sluice gate open. I'd begun to wonder if they weren't using it.
Gareth - if the sluice wasn't being operated properly I wouldn't care to be identified as an EA employee over there :-)
RR As the EA chap says in the vid there are other pumps further upstream - but they haven't been turned on yet.
The sluice gate stops the rising tide going back up the KSD so low tide = open >> high tide = shut. The primary purpose of the pumps us to pump "over the top" at high tide but secondary effect is to lower the water level at the end of the drain effectively raising flow rate. IIRC Dunball KSD sluice is rated at 69m^3/sec and the pumps at 15.5 m^3/sec.
I have to say that considering the assets available to the EA - transparency isn't up there with how much water they have to pump and what the split will be between Parrett and KSD - they've got loads of people sat in offices with expensive software capable of estimating water volumes reasonably accurately from LIDAR data and they should be measuring the flows in Parrett and KSD and advising folk when the waters will subside (assuming no inconvenient rain) - this AFAICS is NOT happening. - and the muddy, damp relatively underpaid operations folk (compared to the office "REMFs" ) are trudging around a forlornly in front of the cameras.
Given the half cocked way this has been handled - I'm frankly wondering what might have happened if the locals hadn't fought as hard - I think the locals should start FoI-ing as soon as possible.
Thank you, tomo. It is really beginning to grate that these folks are getting well-paid by ME! (By well-paid, I mean anything above a basic wage of, say, 12k per year – that seems to be the sort of pay-level they deserve!)
Now that we know the priorities of the Wastemonster puppets, it would be a good idea for local control to be re-established (with or without “authority”). Methinks that there may well already be plans for that underway, and expect to hear of many instances of private dredging taking place. Just think what a feast for the more rabid protest groups! Might be a good idea to invest in popcorn.
"Have they never seen a big pump before?"
Probably not. Pictures of spoonbills and water voles, yes; big pumps, no.
Telling article by Bio-Waste Spreader on p8 of Private Eye no1360
Gist: More scuttlebut on the creeping conservation agenda exacerbating the flood risk in the topographically challenged Levels and Moors. Farmers bought off by agri-environment agreements to "maintain permanent grassland raised water level areas".