Weather warnings are flooding in these days
I’M sure this is just my memory playing tricks on me, but I’m convinced we are getting more flood alerts and warnings than we used to. And I’m sure there was a time when every bad storm which passed didn’t have a name.
Maybe we’re just getting better warnings from organisations like the Environment Agency.
Maybe the threats are as they’ve always been, it’s just that we get more warning now.
This week brought with it the first storm alert of the winter here in Rossendale, with flood alerts in the area too.
Flood-wise, Rossendale seems to have escaped this time – certainly there was nothing to report on the scale of Boxing Day’s floods.
It’s worth remembering that almost a year on, some people flooded out on Boxing Day are away from their homes still.
There was damage in the area, however.
Bacup FC’s roof was blown away for example.
But it’s the frequency of flood alerts which alarms me. They do seem to be far more common.
And surely that has to be part of the argument against insisting Rossendale council find space for 5,000 new homes. Basic geography teaches us that the more things you build in an area, the less soil and earth there is to soak away the water.
And the shape of the Valley – the fact it is, to all intent and purposes, a valley – means that unless all the new homes are built on the top of the hills, using up more green land on the slopes and base of the Valley can only make our flooding problems worse.
I’m sure our political leaders, united as they are to fend off this governmental demand, know this and are using it as part of their argument. To me, it should be the killer argument that makes the Government stop and think.