Planting of 200,000 trees ‘won’t stop flooding but will reduce risk to valley’
FLOOD-HIT COMMUNITIES have been warned that a scheme to plant hundreds of thousands of trees to reduce the risk of their homes and businesses being swamped by future deluges should not be seen as a “fix all” solution.
The Boxing Day floods of 2015 wrought untold misery on the towns of Todmorden, Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd when the River Calder burst its banks.
Since then, numerous flood defence measures have been announced for blackspots across Calderdale, including Yorkshire Water’s long-term Natural Flood Management Plan.
It will start with a scheme to plant up to 200,000 trees on the moors above Gorpley reservoir, between Todmorden and Bacup, and will also include restoring sphagnum moss, repairing dams, strengthening river banks and creating a patchwork of wetland areas on upland estates.
Yorkshire Water and its partner on the scheme, White Rose Forest, say the plans need to be seen as part of the wider picture and change will not happen overnight.
Guy Thompson, from the White Rose Forest, said: “It won’t stop flooding – that’s an important point to make – but it will reduce the risk of flooding.”
Granville Davies, manager of asset strategy for Yorkshire Water, added: “We have to be realistic about what this scheme in isolation will achieve in terms of the whole of the Calder Valley. While this is a great thing to do within this landscape and will have some impact here, it really is this being one part of a whole package of measures that need to be implemented across the whole of the district.
“It’s working alongside more traditional flood defence measures, so the whole range of flood measures complement each other.”