DROWNING IN MISERY
Homes flooded for a month, vast tracts of farmland wrecked, lives put on hold ... all because of staggering incompetence
FURIOUS flood victims last night accused officials of gross incompetence and abandoning them to the elements.
They said they feared the ‘worst was yet to come’ in the Somerset Levels, huge stretches of which have been under water since Christmas.
Experts backed up their claim that the Environment Agency’s decision to stop dredging key rivers had created a ‘disaster area’ covering 25 square miles.
The agency has instead spent £20million on a coastal nature sanctuary, and run a programme encouraging farmers to flood their fields to promote birdlife. The Government has accepted that dredging has to resume, but Environment Agency chairman Lord Smith refuses to accept responsibility for the plight of beleaguered residents.
And he infuriated homeowners by saying his staff had been ‘working their socks off’. The Labour former minister, who is on
£100,000 a year for a three- day week, insisted dredging would not have solved the problems. two key Somerset rivers – the tone and Parrett – are so clogged up with silt their capacity is down 40 per cent.
large volumes of rainwater cannot run to the sea and instead the rivers burst their banks. But neither the Government or the environment Agency has come up with the £4million to restart the dredging.
the agency has offered just £350,000 – leaving the county council and charities to find the rest of the money.
it emerged last night that the Government was explicitly warned a year ago about flood risks on the levels. Falling river maintenance investment was highlighted as a major concern at a Parliamentary evidence session.
the follow-up report included a submission from the Association of Drainage Authorities, which warned: ‘We are deeply concerned at the decisions to reduce maintenance of flood defences.
‘it is essential that adequate revenue funding is provided to enable the environment Agency to conduct the necessary
‘It could have been avoided’
dredging and maintenance. the rivers tone and Parrett are considered to be between a third and two thirds of their capacity, exacerbating the extent and duration of flooding.’
Yesterday Julie Shovel, 52, a veterinary nurse, said she and her husband Malcolm, 54, had only just finished repairing the damage from last year’s floods when the levels deluge started at christmas.
‘the environment Agency are sat in their swanky offices not listening,’ she said. ‘they should have listened to us when we told them there was a problem last year but nothing has changed. they think they know best but they don’t.’
the Met Office is warning more rain is on the way, with another deep area of low pressure due to arrive on Friday.
environment Secretary Owen Paterson said on Monday that officials had failed to properly stop the flooding, and that dredging should restart in Somerset.
Demanding that a new action plan be drawn up within six weeks, he said that national guidelines which stopped regular dredging of rivers in the 1990s were ‘clearly not appropriate’ for the levels.
Jean Venables, of the Association of Drainage Authorities, said it was ‘ very, very urgent’ that rivers in the area were dredged. it’s a disaster area down there and it could have been avoided if we had actually kept up with maintenance on the rivers,’ she told the BBc.
‘We’ve got a 20-year backlog of inactivity down there and it is actually very, very urgent that those rivers are dredged.’
Mark corthine, 62, a former army major, said he had been forced to pump the water out of his house using his own equipment when officials failed to come to his family’s aid. ‘they haven’t ever dredged, and now we are surrounded. they put on the extra pumps because of the environment Secretary coming but it was all too late.
‘And the worst is yet to come. We are due high tides on the 1st and 2nd of February and the water will rise over the banks of the river Parrett, two days in a row.’
the Bishop of taunton has written to all bishops in the House of lords, calling for them to urge the Government to take proper action. the rt rev Peter Maurice wrote: ‘the people with local knowledge are quite clear that there has been no dredging of the main rivers for some years, and that this must be done to prevent repetition of this flooding.’
Anne Mcintosh, who chairs the com- mons environment select committee, said dredging may not have stopped the flooding, which has been ‘of biblical proportions’, but added: ‘ certainly a stitch in time saves nine and it isn’t happening.
‘it’s time to give the responsibility and funding for dredging back to the local drainage boards.’
lord Smith said yesterday: ‘there are one or two people over the last few days who have been throwing a lot of brickbats at the environment Agency and its staff.
‘these are staff who over the course of the last two months have been working their socks off, night and day right through christmas and new Year.
‘they have been running pumping stations, erecting de-mountable defences, they have been co-ordinating information for the emergency services, providing warnings where needed, clearing blockages.’
He added: ‘it is quite possible that dredging will be part of the solution, but, i must emphasise, only part of the solution.
‘it would not have solved the problems we are facing at the moment.’
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