Dredge the Rivers ffs!!!!!!

[finetonive]

We need to go back to dredging rivers REGULARLY.

Those poor people.

mamatj - thats to do with the position of the jet stream, not the dredging.

there could be some simple incentives; for example reduced or no VAT on double-glazing, insulation, new boilers and so on. The green deal was a stupid idea in the first place and failed because of over-complication and massive overheads.

there could also be grants for people buying a dilapidated property and refurbishing it up to modern standards.

reduced energy use, more houses, no extra tarmac. Win win.

flood situation seems to be worsening. Terrible.

Part of the problem is the last 50 years or so have been 'dry'. These are the records from which design flood levels for river defences are estimated - typically to protect up to the 1 in 100 year event.

However longer term records suggest that the UK is in fact much wetter. So even ignoring the contributing factors of climate change, land use change, river management, etc, our flood defences are potentially not giving us the standard of defence we thought.

www.geomorphology.org.uk/news/stormy-geomorphology-working-group-storm-desmond

Solutions are easy - loads of ideas on this thread, all would could potentially work depending on each location's needs - but only if you're willing to throw enough money at it. The real question is: what % of our GDP are we willing to spend on flood defences?

The real question is: what % of our GDP are we willing to spend on flood defences?
Better to alleviate the flooding at source ....

watershed management

I'd like it if they would:

• make it compulsory to have solar panels on all new builds
• only have tree planting or animal grazing on flood plains
• try and bring back hedgerows and lining fields with trees
• build up, rather than outwards on all new flats to reduce the footprint of the building on the ground
• put car parking spaces under new flats rather than tarmacking around them
• have a public transport tax and the cost of that would cover free public transport for everyone, which would make it less economical to use cars
• stop building over school playing fields and urban parks
• have more tree lined roads (good for water drainage and improves peoples moods)
• Allow people to have a driveway for only one car in their front gardens in urban areas and leave the rest un-concreted.
• Stop people getting larger and larger cars for the sake of it. No-one needs a large 4x4 with only 1-2 people, that doesn't leave an urban area or tow a trailer.

Naturally none of this will ever happen...

Planning rules in my Local Authority insist on two parking spaces per house. We have one car, and had to fight them to get them to include the garage as a parking space (totally reasonable since it is where we park the car).
If they had their way, every front garden would pave almost 10 square metres of garden just for parking.

Sorry, 30 square metres

my dh is a hydrologist, and he is Dutch.
he used to work for the water board in Holland and was responsible for future planning for climate change etc. That was 20 years ago.

He is astonished at the British attitude to water planning.
In Holland, no planning permission can be passed unless the water board also passes it. Any building with a larger footprint has to compensate with a similar size water storage area. This is usually a lake/pond etc in front of the building (because a patch of open water stores 3x as much water as a similar sized patch of ground) If you go to Holland you will see that there are patches of open water everywhere, this is precisely in order to store water.

Every water way is controlled. No canal can rise more than 2-3 cms without the control kicking in, and the water being pumped out to safe area. there are inbuilt flood areas, and rivers have dykes (levees) so that they can take huge amounts of excess water.

Building on flood plains is a massive issue, because the best way to deal with sudden large rainfall is to allow it to flood a safe area, and then drain away.
We simply do not have plans in place for flooding.
The current economic plan is that every £1 spent has to provide £8 of savings. Why? Surely that should be £1=£1

But also in the last week we have had enormous amounts of rainfall in a very short period of time, and non of our flood plans have allowed for that. These very heavy rains in a short time are due to climate change. We haven't yet started to plan for climate change. the comments about 'once in 100 years flood' are not taking into account that this will be more frequent.

No need to stop people having as much parking space as there property allows. They just need to ensure that the right materials are used - like porous Tarmac

m.youtube.com/watch?v=-iJP7DFt6AU

And Steppemum. The Netherlands have a completely different set of problems to the UK. Very flat and large areas below sea level. As such floods can cover much wider areas and much more quickly. Some areas of the U.K. have similar issues but others are completely different.

Obehave - obviously their issues are different, but the point is, they have serious water management systems in place, and they control what is happening.
The key point though, is that the water board has a veto over any planning. The plan has to take account of water issues. We need to move to that situation in the UK. Every plan must take into account water flow. That includes permeable tarmac, water storage areas, flood plains, drainage etc.

In Netherlands, France and much of Europe, the permeable tarmac is used on roads too, with great effect as it reduces spray and makes driving safer. We don't use it here, I have never understood why not.

Agree with PP that dredging is not the answer, water storage including tree planting in the uplands is.

The government subsidise farmers to remove trees and scrub from their land - the more land that is available for grazing, the more money they get. How bloody short sighted.

When I studied GCSE Geography 30 years ago I was taught that the floodplain is the riverbed. It's just a part of the riverbed that is used less often. So why the hell do we build houses on the riverbed then get surprised when it fills with water?

Dredging downstream to increase the depth of the river to allow it to store more water will reduce flooding upstream.

It is true that dredging upstream wil increase flow rates and just make flooding worse but as someone rightly pointed out earlier starting from near the mouth of the river and working backwards towards the source is what needs to happen.

The sedimentation in our local large river is very clear to see when it is flooding in winter. The water is full of bright coloured soil/sand form a few miles upstream and that all drops to the bottom of the river downstream and that is what needs dredging out.

Add t that the huge amount of gardens paved over and it adds to raid run off. There is a art of our city that is a large hpusing estate and I went round there at Christmas doing charity collecting and entire streets have had gardens paved over with 2 - 4 cars parked on each. There are literally no gardens now in some streets. That is bound to have had a huge effect on run off to the nearby river

We live in the fens , and are actually below sea level , and to a certain extent , it seems to operate like the Dutch do. If we apply for anything that requires planning permission , it has to go through the Internal Drainage Board , who look after our ditches and go round twice a year dredging every bank and have the power to veto anything that would cause a significant flood risk . Tarmacing driveways is totally not allowed , so everyone either has to have gravel , or get a properly assessed soak away built in if they block pave . It helps that we now have the biggest pumping station in Britain that looks after us which was finished in 2010 , which has the capacity to pump out five Olympic sized swimming pools worth of water every two minutes if it has to , but we haven't had any flooding that hasn't been intentional since 1953 . The EA open the Ouse washes in the winter , which then floods , but that's done by design , and everyone works round that .

Dredging doesn't help with flooding

I love how people keep saying dredging doesn't help with flooding and yet those that have regular dredging and live in flood prone areas are saying it does.

Problem with the fens is that it's the east side of the country (and receives less rain) and is flat rather than hills/mountains so receives less rain. So difficult to compare with, say, Cumbria (and these hills are largely granite, I think, so you won't be dredging much off them).

CantSee - "...those that have regular dredging and live in flood prone areas are saying it does."

That is a crucial point. Local people with local knowledge of local conditions. Especially people who have ben involved with rivers and live near them for many years know them intimately.

I would especially point to the way way water run off is managed in the Netherlands by Steppemum and the the local regulations in the Fens discussed by Plomino.It seems to me that there are people in this country and overseas who have a lot of knowledge that we can use.

I strongly feel the Environent Agency in Whitehall are far too remote and too politically driven to manage this. Indeed I read a comment on a blog a while ago by a local EA engner who said very bluntly that London based EA staff point blank refused to come out of London and assist in local emergencies.

Local people know local conditions. This whole issue needs to be managed at local level and proper ring fenced funding given to local EA resources for routine dredging, ditch and dyke repair and maintaienence. Indeed 40 years ago our local 'milesman' was made redundant ana dhe did nothng all year but go round clearing ditches and streams to make sure they worked properly in winter.

Now far too often small water courses are bulldozed over by property developers. As one local person bemoaned near where I used to live. The local stream now ran through his garage as a property developer had covered it over and it had diverted through his property isntead.

I think that the ditches and clearance of small water courses is probably far more significant in this type of rain that dredging rivers.

The rain we have had means very large volumes of water in a very short period of time. Some places were flooded up to their windowsills one evening and dry the next morning. This type of rain is far greater volume in far shorter time than we are used to.

When this type of rainfall happens, we need every ditch etc to fill up and hold as much water as possible.
There was flooding near us in summer of 2009, and it was all surface run off. Afterwards it was shown that all the roadside ditches had not been maintained. The council had stopped clearing them a couple of years before. After the flooding lots of local farmers cleared the ditches along the roads by their farms. They did it because they were worried about further flooding.
It seems to me that some of the subsidies that farmers get could be dependent on keeping ditches cleared.

Dredging downstream to increase the depth of the river to allow it to store more water will reduce flooding upstream.
NOT IF THE TIDE IS IN
There is no point dredging below high tide
Last year on the Somerset Levels was the combination of high rain and neap tides

no dredging in the world will make the water flow away if the tide is in.

The problem in York is nothing to do with dredging.
It is due to the lack of hydrostatic lag on the upper watershed due to a lack of vegetation

The ONLY way to alleviate York's problems is to slow the water down before it gets to the city so that there is a longer lower peak flow

I thought el nino was the cause of this winters heavy rains, a normal cyclical occurance nothing to do with the alleged man-made 'climate change'

Nope.

So why the hell do we build houses on the riverbed then get surprised when it fills with water?

Evidence of building on floodplains please?

Where has this happened in the last 30 years?

Evidence of building on floodplains please?

Where has this happened in the last 30 years?

Are you serious? I can think of several developments near me which are on fields which used to flood, and that is just my local area.
One is a Tescos superstore. Now the dual carriage way and the field on the other side of the road flood.
The only good thing you can say is that they have built houses on the other side or the road in the last 3 years, but DIDN'T build on the lower part by the river, but left it as a park, so it can flood.

Peters Finger in Salisbury
Fishlake Meadows in Romsey (real name)
Testwood Lakes near Southampton
Fishbourne in Chichester

shall I go on?

Dredging culverts, dikes and other drainage waterways obviously will help reduce flooding. I grew up on the Fens and now live between to large rivers... they dredge the drainage systems or drown.

Dredging rivers will have a totally different outcome. As rivers are not drainage systems, have a tendency to got their own way, due to their not having been designed!

So there needs to be an appropriate dredging system, and a nationwide public information film to explain why!

Sillybilly (nice name ) there are many new developments on flood plains... the trick seems to be not to actually designate them as such on council maps, Ta da! Lots of building spaces... I give you Tewkesbury and Longlevens here in Gloucestershire. There are many more but, whilst wildly different in nature and history, they both have old 'new' developments and new and yet more proposed development on land known by all and sundry to be flood plains. You will have seen both on national news, a lot, during the last couple of floods here.