Climate change or mismanaged rivers?

[ILoveJoeBrown]

After the recent floods, media seems to be insisting it's mostly climate change related. L

However, any MNers out there feel that flooding is more (or at least just as much) due to inadequate drainage management, lack of dredging rivers and building on floodplains (cheap land), wetland plain bad housekeeping.

I've heard a few interviews with farmers who claim that if they had just been allowed to dredge the rivers on their land, it wouldn't have happened or wouldn't have been so bad?

"...wetland plain..." should just say "...and..."

Massive issues with lack of dredging. Natural England and the Environment agency are very often very misguided in their approach to land management in my experience. They just won't listen to farmers and assume their degrees trump generations of local farming knowledge.

Council cuts have also led to chronic neglect of drains and drainage culverts which also doesn't help.

It makes me really mad when the finger is pointed at sheep on mountains being the cause of flooding while everyone looks the other way at thousands of acres of greenfield sites and flood plains being patioed over.

A combination. Climate change increases probability of this sort of thing happening, increases the chances of an "100 year event" happening within 12 years of the last one , increases the chance that the next event will be even worse

, and land management can make it easier or harder to cope with

It's the complex interactions that make it harder to fix as everyone tries to avoid responsibility

I heard someone in radio 4 this evening describing how builders are throwing all their sand and waste in the drainage system too. And they had a go at people who have gravel drives too.

There are some new estates the next town over from me, they’ve been built a couple of years. A lot of trees were cleared to make room. They’ve flooded with the two recent storms, badly. There’s a bit of an upcry over social media. “It never flooded here before!”
No it didn’t, because the trees absorbed it all before and your spotless brick driveways can’t do that. There’s nowhere for the water to go, so it floods. Most seemed shocked when I pointed it out. Not sure many paid an awful lot of attention in school!

There is a small museum on the banks of the river Severn that shows the highest heights of the river for about the last 300 years (approx). It would be interesting to find out if this year's height is higher than the highest recorded so far

We can't stop the rain
We can't stop the sea

I feel sorry for all the people who have had their homes & businesses flooded

Dredging may help, but I don't think that it would totally solve the issue

Perhaps ask the Dutch for better ideas related to water management, because they seem to do it so well