Jul 23 2007
What should the Environment Agency do with too much rainwater?
When rivers swell following a period of very heavy rain there are three courses of action open to the Environment Agency which has the duty of water management.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
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John,
There are other measures that should be undertaken, particularly maintain drains properly, I can’t remember the last time I saw a drain being cleaned. Secondly keep rivers dredged properly to maximise water flow. Thirdly store temporary flood defences close to where they will be used rather than miles away.
While the emergency services have been, as ever, exceptional the Department of the Environment is a joke.
Yours from Upton in Severn
‘He was very keen to lecture us on climate change…’
That’s exactly it, professional policy wonks like Miliband get bored with bread and butter stuff like flood defences, instead they want to dream up madcap schemes for ‘tradable personal carbon credits’ and the like that will not make the slightest bit of difference to the weather.
Another trick is to pay the local farmers to use tractors and trailers as rescue vehicles, instead of calling out the RAF to do the same job much more slowly and more expensively.
Tractors are very tall machines, and it takes much more than two or three feet of water to stall one. Farm flatbed trailers are similarly far off the ground, and whilst it may be much less glamorous to get a ride on the local farmer’s haycart, there’re an awful lot more farm tractors than RAF seakings.