35 Replies to “Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill”

  1. Think everyone on levels knows dredging will not stop some flooding,that is not the issue nor is dredging deeper the big part of the problem.
    Why do these people throw complete red herrings in all the time.
    Levels people expect some flooding as it has happened so often in the past.
    What they also say is that with no dredging the river is now much narrower with reeds growing and their estimate I believe is that if dredged the river would carry 40% more water.

  2. If the suggestion is that these events have been predicted, then surely the most appropriate reaction would have been to spend money on trying to deal with the effects of climate change rather than pretend that we can stop climate change by various spurious means involving ‘reduction of carbon emissions’ and ‘alternative energy sources’.

    1. If climate change continues unabated, the planet will eventually become uninhabitable for humans. The implication is not that we spend money on “spurious” ways of stopping climate change, but rather that we do something to reduce carbon emissions as a way of reducing the impact of mankind on the climate.

      You do raise a valid point as regards how much money should be spent to “save” the Somerset levels. I would suggest that government doesn’t appear to be giving adaptation measures much priority (perhaps because they know how high the cost would be). All this talk of dredging is about something that a) won’t cost all that much (compared to major engineering works) b) won’t make much difference to flooding anyway

  3. Sitting close to the River Lambourn, which is now itself getting unusually high, and wondering what will get me first, sewage or river water (I’d rather have the latter) even though my house is outside the mega flood zone, I hear many people have suddenly become expert hydrodynamicists. Everyone knows what should have been done on the Somerset Levels, equally, everyone knows what someone did wrong in the past on the Lambourn and it would all be much less of a problem if it was done like so and all that pesky weed (aka rannunculus, the SAC feature), should be “managed” to within an inch of its existence, and that it’s all “that Environmental Agency’s” fault for not doing something, or doing something wrongly.

    I’m not sitting here wondering who to blame and getting angry, although I am rather concerned about having a house full of sewage! I’m thinking we’ve had more rain in the south of England than we’ve had for decades, in fact much river flow data is showing we were in a period of drought through the ’80s and ’90s even though we probably weren’t aware of it at the time. Now we’re definitely not in a period of drought and it’s because it’s rained a lot, a real lot. The rivers are responding as they should, i.e. trying to get out of bank, the aquifers are responding as they should by filling and overflowing. The earth beneath our houses and other man-made structures is increasingly saturated, and perhaps not so sturdy and reliable as we thought. It’s because it’s rained a lot, oh, and we’ve built things we don’t want to get wet rather too close to the rivers and in rather too many places.

    If you don’t believe in climate change, then blame a gay badger or something religious, if you do, blame ourselves, the lot of us. I do believe in climate change, and don’t blame the EA, although the water company’s apparently inadequate sewer system and their reluctance to sort anything out hasn’t gone unnoticed. I think we all just have to accept these thing are happening, what happened in the past isn’t always going to be an indication of what will happen in the future and that we need to collectively grow up and find ways to live in these climatically changing times, rather than look for someone to blame. If the government were showing any indication that they were thinking along the same lines I might have some respect for them.

    What we don’t need is a media-generated hysteria, or MPs spouting idiotic rubbish on subjects about which they know very little – more of those expert hydrodynamicists.

    And on the subject of rivers, why is it so hard to get people to appreciate them as another and vital part of our natural environment, rather than simply a water (and almost always) effluent carrier??

    Rant over!

  4. I think this article from the Spectator this Saturday 8th Feb sums up what happens when you ignore practical advice from NGO’s and farmers as a result of your political bias.

    “Floods of incompetence – why Chris Smith should resign from the Environment Agency”

    When Prince Charles arrived in Somerset to meet some of those caught up in the disaster which in five weeks has drowned 50 square miles of that county in floodwater, a reporter asked him whether he blamed the Environment Agency. Judiciously, he replied, ‘You may well think that — I couldn’t possibly comment.’ Later, having spoken to several of those intimately involved in this crisis, he hinted rather more plainly at his own view by saying, ‘The tragedy is that nothing happened for so long.’
    With the third flood disaster to hit the Somerset Levels in three years, the Environment Agency has been horribly caught out by a catastrophe largely of its own making. As local experts have been trying to point out since last year’s flood (and as some hammered home to the Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, when he recently made an emergency visit to Somerset), the unprecedented scale of this mess is not just due to nature. It is a disaster that has resulted from a deliberate policy followed by the Environment Agency since, 18 years ago, it was given overall responsibility for river management and flood defences throughout England.
    For centuries the Somerset Levels — covering a fifth of all that large county’s farmland — had been kept efficiently drained, ever since they were first transformed from a marshy swamp into productive farmland by Dutch engineers in the reign of Charles I. They had been expertly managed by farmers and engineers, through more than a thousand miles of drains and ditches that were regularly cleaned, and since the 19th century by scores of pumping stations.
    Many of our cherished ancient habitats are, of course, created and managed by man. It has been a long time since nature was self-regulating in this country in the way that some in the Environment Agency seem to wish it to be. The British have been living on reclaimed land for hundreds of years — which is what makes it so bizarre that quangocrats seem to think such areas should no longer enjoy proper protection.
    The key to the Somerset Levels lies in its rivers, kept dredged to provide all that water pumped off the land with an escape route down to the sea. From the moment the Environment Agency took over, however, it began to neglect its responsibility for keeping those rivers clear. From 2000 onwards, under the leadership of a Labour peeress, Baroness Young of Old Scone, this reluctance to dredge and to maintain the pumping stations became a deliberate ideology, designed to give priority to the interests of ‘habitat’ and ‘biodiversity’ over those of protecting the Levels as farmland. Lady Young is famously said to have remarked that she wanted to see ‘a limpet mine attached to every pumping station’.
    The undredged rivers gradually become clogged with silt, drastically reducing their ability to take floodwater away. The Somerset farmers and engineers who run the local ‘drainage boards’, responsible for cleaning the ditches or ‘rhynes’, also found that the Environment Agency was forever on their backs, imposing every kind of restriction on what needed to be done; such as how they could dispose of the resulting silt and vegetation, now classified as rigorously ‘controlled waste’.
    The inevitable result has been the shambles which those who live on the Levels have now had to endure for years. They have always been accustomed to winter flooding of the vast area that is below sea level. But this is worse than anything in memory — not just more extensive but lasting for months rather than weeks. The cost this year may be in excess of £100 million. Dredging the rivers would cost £4.5 million, which the Agency found to be excessive. (Although it cheerfully footed the £31 million bill for a bird sanctuary.)
    Steadily, the Environment Agency has become a law unto itself. The idea behind its creation was to allow it to operate free from political interference. But, as Dennis Sewell argues on pages 18 and 19, the reverse has been true. They now form a deeply politicised government in exile, with an incompetent but self-revering hierarchy that voters cannot dislodge.
    Nothing has more vividly conveyed the failure of the Environment Agency during this crisis than the lamentable public performances of its current chairman, the former Labour culture secretary Lord (Chris) Smith. His weak, half-shifty, half-arrogant interviews have shown him up to be a man wholly out of touch with the reality of the havoc his agency’s policies have wreaked. His blatherings about a choice between protecting ‘front rooms or farmland’ sums up his failure to understand the countryside, and the fact that most people have looked after both for generations.
    He is due to step down shortly, which is a shame: he ought to be fired for rank incompetence. But the reckoning should not stop there. It is now clear that the Environment Agency has become a threat to the countryside it was set up to serve. It ought to be dismantled, and its responsibilities shared out among smaller bodies which are much more obviously fit for purpose.
    This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 8 February 2014

    2. Right-Wing Magazine blames the floods on Labour and guess what a Conservative Councillor is in full agreement – quelle surprise !

      I find the whole notion that somehow the current flooding situation in the levels is the result of a left-wing conspiracy at the Environment Agency a bit Walter Mitty to say the least, in fact it’s bloody pathetic. The sight of Cameron wading through flood water desperately trying to apportion blame in an attempt to make political capital on the back of humanitarian disaster to my mind summed up everything that is bad about both the current Government and British politics.
      The last thing those poor denizens of the levels need is political showboating – they need solutions and effective long-term ones at that. It’s a good job the Levels Task Force appears to have its eye firmly on the ball.

      And just for the record, not once in my life I have ever voted Labour, and I don’t doubt for a minute that if either Blair or Milliband E had been in Cameron’s shoes on Friday the politicking would have been much different.

      1. “they need solutions and effective long-term ones at that”

        Absolutely. The Levels Task Force is not the only voice – but there is probably some overlapping going on.

        http://www.somersetdrainageboards.gov.uk/notice-board/drainage-boards-10-point-plan-to-beat-flooding-on-the-levels/

        Visits to the area by the various cheeks of the same arse are merely distractions. Pickles hit the nail on the head today on the Marr show: “I apologise unreservedly and I’m really sorry that we took the advice, we thought we were dealing with experts.” Which is some straight talking for a politician. But I still don’t understand the convention they have for taking the blame for the decisions of previous Maladministrations.

        The blame game relies also on short memories and spin – Maria Eagle must be quite dizzy. Baroness Young is nowhere to be seen – natch. Oh No! She’s Chiefio at Diabetes UK – suddenly I feel vulnerable. Will she make us better by feeding us carbs because we’re all going to die, anyway?

  5. However could Julian Swift’s comment pick up two dislikes,were they Environment people,just about the only explanation.

    1. Dennis – you do keep an eagle eye on those likes/dislikes don’t you?! I’m impressed – in a way!

    2. Well one of them was mine Dennis and if by “environment people” you mean people working for the EA then no I don’t and never have. However, I am sick of the blame being laid entirely at their door, a view that is simplistic in the extreme. Am I alone in being completely outraged by Eric Pickles’ statement “perhaps we relied too much on the EA’s advice….. we thought we were dealing with experts”. Fatuous, simplistic and hugely insulting to the many people who work there who are currently putting in long hours to help; and also disingenuous, because after all as we have seen on many occasions the Govt is happy enough to ignore the advice of experts when it suits it. You can’t have it both ways, mister (except of course you can and you do).

      I am not by the way suggesting the EA is entirely without responsibility. But let’s bear in mind a) this is an agency facing massive cuts at the hands of the Govt and is therefore struggling and b) this level of rainfall is unprecedented in recent times. This is not a normal event and although I don’t pretend to know much about hydrology, I really don’t believe that dredging on its own will do more than move the water more quickly in times of heavy, but not unusual, rainfall.

      Sian had it absolutely right above and I too sat anxiously in a house in 2001 with a mile-wide and 12ft deep River Ouse (a flooded area about the size of Lake Windermere as I recall) practically lapping at my doorstep, wondering what the next few hours would bring. I feel desperately sorry for those people caught in floods in the Levels and other areas and their anger is understandable. But they are not helped by those “in charge” political point scoring and flinging blame around about things that have already happened or not happened and nor will it prevent this happening again. We have seen time and time again that it takes a disaster or something akin to one before anything changes – it’s human nature to put off embarking on radical/expensive solutions to something that hasn’t yet occurred, unfortunately for those who suffer when it does. So rather than wasting time mudslinging for political gain how about working together with those who do know about the complex issues involved.

      And yes I do know that I am being naive!

      1. Lisa- welcome and thank you for a feisty comment. Much appreciated.

        I’m not sure that flood defence budgets have been cut at EA – maybe in practice they have but I thought that after a slight mini-gaff by the CEO, Chris Smith was quick to say that they weren’t complaining about cuts in flood defence. He then, perfectly correctly, stated that it still meant that there were choices to be made in where the money is spent.

        And it cannot be said too often that these events are way out of line with normal – what system would have worked under these conditions of continual rain, I wonder/ will we ever be told?

      2. Lisa, policy for Flood Risk management is determined and owned by Government. They are effectively the client for work on Flood Risk Management including writing Catchment Flood Risk Management plans (CFMP’s). CFMP’s are statements produced by the EA setting out how flood risks are to be managed in the future (see http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/planning/33586.aspx). Their purpose, amongst other things is to translate Government’s policy into a series of practical actions for each river basin.

        Eric Pickles’ extraordinary statement suggests that either:
        • Defra did not understand the implications of the work that they had commissioned from the EA to implement their own policy and did not bother to check it,
        • That they did understand it and chose to do nothing.

        Either way it is pretty damning situation.

        The way that Chris Smith has been treated through this debacle has been despicable. It is good to see that he has come out fighting: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/floods-environment-agency-chris-smith-hits-back.

  6. While obviously believing the fact that it is exceptional rainfall that does not tell the complete picture as the ground before this was relatively dry,I would guess that period mid Oct to mid Nov was one of exceptional low rainfall.For a politician to apologise for not dredging must mean it was desperately needed.Of course by blaming Environmental Agency he is just shifting the blame,there was no reason surely that the Government could not overule them.

    1. Dennis – I think your guess is wrong. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-anomalies/#?tab=climateAnomalies It seems that October rainfall in southern England was high, November was average and December was high again. And then January was really high. We did have a nice summer though – but I was writing a book through much of it!

      For a politician to apologise for a a Department which is not his own, and an Agency that isn’t one of his either, is not such a big deal, I would say. I’d like to apologise for all the things that WWF did in the first decade of this century (to pick an organisation at random to illustrate the point) – although I wasn’t responsible and I wasn’t there, and I don’t quite know for what I am apologising – but I hope it will be very popular!

  7. It’s not the fault of the EA.

    It’s inevitable

    Draining wetlands, reclaiming salt marshes and walling in rivers will no longer work due to the effects of climate change, such as fiercer storms, more intense downpours and rising sea levels. New sea defences are being built inland of old one which are now being allowed to breach. Fields are being turned into lakes to slow the rush of the water etc and flood management is returning natural methods.

    The strategy of “making space for water” isn’t new and was due to be implemented by 2030 but the urgency of implementing it is increasing every year.

    It’s no surprise that the usual suspects want to blame everything except climate change. The penny is slowly dropping though.

    On a matter of fact Mark that you queried above, EA flood defence budgets have been cut. And this is the second time in two years that we’ve had “once-in-a-lifetime” weather…

      1. Yes. I found this easy to ascertain through the free internetz that came with my computer. The funding cuts are no secret.

        The Ends Report is a good initial source. This from Jan 3 2014
        http://www.endsreport.com/41653/environment-agency-cuts-surviving-the-surgeons-knife

        The cuts are so deep that departmental ‘salami slicing’ is insufficient. Major restructuring of how the agency works is needed, with potential ramifications for everything from flooding to waste crime.

        Despite that, Paul Leinster, the agency’s long-serving chief executive, was surprisingly optimistic about the future during the first half hour of a meeting with ENDS in mid-November.

        “You can always cope,” he said. “The important thing for me is that by March 2016, we’ll still be 9,700 people and we’ll still have a budget of over £1bn.

        He also pointed out that the agency coped well with major funding cuts in 2010 and 2011 and dealt impeccably with last year’s extensive floods.

        Paul Leinster, head of the EA, said budget cuts and redundancies would impact on its work to reduce flood risk, telling the ENDS report that major restructuring would be needed. Fifteen per cent, equal to 557, of the EA’s flooding staff will lose their jobs over the next 10 months, with teams working on flood-related issues set to be affected.
        “Flood risk maintenance will be [further] impacted,” he told the magazine. “All of our work on mapping and modelling and new developments in things like flood warning will also have to be resized. And we’re looking at a proportionate reduction in the number of people in flood risk management.
        “I wouldn’t want to underestimate the reduction [in those levels compared to cuts elsewhere] and the impact that’s going to have. But one of the things it drives us towards is looking at ‘are there better ways that we can do some activities? Are there ways that we can streamline?’ That’s our challenge.”

          1. The head of the EA makes it abundantly clear that he has less money and fewer people to deal with flooding. The cuts are not minor and not insignificant. 15% of flooding staff have been cut for instance.

            Again,
            Paul Leinster, head of the EA, said budget cuts and redundancies would impact on its work to reduce flood risk, telling the ENDS report that major restructuring would be needed. Fifteen per cent, equal to 557, of the EA’s flooding staff will lose their jobs over the next 10 months, with teams working on flood-related issues set to be affected.
            “Flood risk maintenance will be [further] impacted,” he told the magazine. “All of our work on mapping and modelling and new developments in things like flood warning will also have to be resized. And we’re looking at a proportionate reduction in the number of people in flood risk management.

          2. Steve – thanks. The cuts appear to be in the future ‘would impact’, ‘would be needed’ and ‘will lose their jobs’. So that wouldn’t have influenced what they did last year? It’s not a major point but that’s what I understood to be happening. Is that wrong?

    2. The future certainly is inevitable. What happens in it can be affected by us, and this won’t include a global net decline in GHG emissions – only a per capita reduction, at best.

      A paper published last month in the Hydrological Sciences Journal, entitled “Flood risk and climate change: global and regional perspectives”, concludes, among other things, that: “It is clear that current trends in human activity on the landscape continue to cause an increase in flood damages. Decreasing or reversing this trend will require substantial attention from governments, private citizens, scientists and engineers, and the actions needed to accomplish this are largely the same regardless of the nature of the greenhouse gas–flood linkage. … There is such a furore of concern about the linkage
      between greenhouse forcing and floods that it causes society to lose focus on the things we already know for certain about floods and how to mitigate and adapt to them. The scientific community needs to emphasize that the problem of flood losses is mostly about what we do on or to the landscape and that will be the case for decades to come.”

      http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02626667.2013.857411

  8. Ernest, My point was not meant to be right or left wing actually and I wouldn’t get too carried away with me being a Con Cllr. I’m not the PM just a humble DCllr and actually at that level party politics are fairly good natured with a surprising amount of common ground which is the way that personally I like it.

    Going back to the article I was impressed by it as it is very difficult these days to point out that there is a degree of practical ability and experience needed to manage or control these situations without sounding very old-fashioned. Obviously in this cases the EA staff have a great deal of practical experience but I doubt if Chris Smith has ever picked up a spade !

    Like it or not the farming sector deals with drainage, ditch cleaning and maintaining watercourses daily and rightly in my opinion they are very dismissive about the stuff that the EA has come out with on why maintenance of the Somerset Levels infrastructure wouldn’t have alleviated the situation. Obviously reading some of the comments on this blog there are quite a number of contributors who don’t think that counts for much……..

    1. Not particularly relevant to this (Somerset) discussion but in terms of …. “the farming sector deals with” …. in the Humberhead Levels area the IDB members aka farming sector, work very hard promoting (& trying to fund) their own interests rather than those required by the legislation under which they operate (one such Board receives 87% of its budget from the special levy, i.e. at public expense). They also get away with damaging SSSIs, see Mark’s guest blog of https://markavery.info/2013/01/17/guest-blog-a-muzzled-watchdog-toothless-terrier-helen-kirk/ where it illustrates the ineffectiveness of two other Defra agencies! Another recent incident involves a badger sett, pointless trying to do anything about that?

  10. Julian,welcome to the club.
    Mark,sorry if I was wrong but I was at that time doing something needing dry days so and went at least four weeks with no problem so can only think that rain came in the night.Of course December probably high due to the last 13 days.
    Not looking for excuses or doubting your facts but just how I felt.

  11. One of the main arguments for blaming the EA, as repeated by Julian above, is that whilst winter flooding of ‘a vast area that is below sea level’ was a regular occurrence prior to the EA’s involvement, the current situation is worse than anything in memory. Will that not be a bit like the rainfall then?

    There are quantified data going back a century or two to demonstrate the severity of the weather. As the comment was clearly not political, presumably there must be equally robust evidence in order to describe the EA / chair / staff as self-revering, highly politicised, incompetent, lamentable, weak, half arrogant and half shifty?

  12. As someone who has had to lead in difficult times, what horrifies me more than anything else is the spectacular lack of any sort of leadership in all this – today i have heard Cameron starting to get it right – more than a week after he marginalised his own Environment Secretary and Eric Pickles has quite frankly disgraced himself beyond recovery. You do not shoot your own people in the back – have any of these incompetents stopped to think how their employees on the ground fighting the floods right this minute might be feeling about the support they are getting ? This isn’t the winter Olympics where politicians are all too keen to jump on the bandwagon, this is real life with real fellow citizens suffering, and also fighting hard to help them. We should be pulling together – ensuring people who’ve been driven out of their homes have everything they need and being quite certain the people on the front line have everything they need – I have not seen one single reference (other perhaps than negatives) to the real people in EA fighting on the front line.

    1. ‘Tis always thus when departments – and organisations – are slagged off, but I think most people are grown-up enough to realise that such generalisations apply in the general and not the specific. In the case of the EA, there is a growing dissatisfaction with its management and working culture from within its own ranks, that goes back beyond the present flooding events – http://insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk/

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