Even the wetlands centre’s too wet
FARMER Jonathan Coate is no stranger to flooding. Not only does he grow the water-loving willow tree but he also runs a wetlands visitor centre. So, presumably, he’s better placed than most to cope with the Biblical inundation of his native Somerset? Not exactly.
‘That’s my crop, there – somewhere,’ he says, pointing at a lake stretching as far as the eye can see. A few twigs are poking through the water in places. It turns out they are the upper branches of Jonathan’s willow trees.
They are actually eight feet above the ground. Now is the time for harvesting willow, and Jonathan has 80 acres ready for cutting. What if he can’t get the crop in?
‘I don’t know,’ says Jonathan. ‘It’s never happened before. Let’s not go there …’ He falls silent.
Even the wetlands are drowning in the bureaucrat-driven disaster that now besets the ancient farming region we call the Somerset Levels.
The Coate family have been harvesting willow here at Stoke St Gregory since 1819. Jonathan, 45, is the seventh generation to take charge of a business which employs 26 people making traditional wicker baskets and furniture.
Their handiwork is to be found everywhere from Buckingham Palace (every Guardsman’s bearskin is supported by a willow framework) to the lower extremities of a hot air balloon. The family also welcome 25,000 visitors a year to their café and education centre. Today, both are empty. And if there is no willow crop, who knows what happens next?
‘We’ve always had two or three feet of flooding for a couple of weeks each winter,’ says Jonathan. ‘That’s perfectly normal around here. We’re used to difficult conditions. But we’re not used to eight feet of water which just isn’t going anywhere. If it hasn’t gone in the next few weeks, then I’ll be very very worried.’
Here are yet more blameless victims of the incompetent know-alls at the Environment Agency whose failure to maintain the complex and ancient water courses of the vast Somerset Levels is roundly blamed for this catastrophic sea of filth and fetid floodwater.
Duncan McGinty, leader of Sedgemoor council, which covers much of the area, tells me that some 13 per cent of his domain is underwater. Yesterday, the British Red Cross, no less, arrived with vehicles and expertise.
There are scraps of positive information to report from the shores of what we might as well call Lake Somerset.
Yesterday morning, the water level seemed to have dropped a little. For weeks now, the crew of the ferry to the marooned village of Muchelney have been debating the make of the sunken car which remains a hazard to shipping on the edge of the main channel.
It looks a bit like a Ford Mondeo, but might it be a Toyota? The waters have now receded just enough to reveal that it is, in fact, a Seat Toledo.
The mood was certainly lifted by the Prime Minister’s comments in Parliament yesterday but, for now, there is no great optimism, let alone rejoicing.
‘There’s a big high tide due this weekend so we’ll probably see it all go up again,’ says Roger Forgan, a farmer who has suffered more than most.
ROGER, 60, and his fiancée, Linda Maudsley, are the tenants at Horsey Farm, or Horsey Island as it has been since New Year’s Eve. Muchelney is remote enough. Horsey, in turn, is cut off from Muchelney. It is the desolate Pitcairn Island of the Somerset Levels. During last winter’s floods, Roger and Linda were stuck on their farm for two weeks.
As the waters rose again this winter, Roger refused to countenance another spell of desert island living. So he bought a boat and an outboard engine.
Normally, the couple farm 600 acres. Right now, they are down to four. Until last weekend, they had a fraction of that.
For weeks, the only dry patch has been the upper floor of the farmhouse – the ground floor was two feet deep – plus one raised corner of the
garden with just enough space for the couple’s 25 sheep.
When these floods started, the waters rose so fast that their other animals – 50 cattle and various horses and dogs – had to be evacuated by the RSPCA.
Roger’s main business is making hay, and we wade out to look at a barn full of the stuff. The water has been absorbed from the bottom of the pile to the top. Most of it is ruined. ‘They’ve insured it against fire but not flooding,’ he tells me with a hollow laugh. ‘Someone said I’d be better off putting a match to it!’
Like everyone else, he is furious with the ‘idiots’ at the Environment Agency for leaving these rivers undredged for 20 years. But he points out that the proliferation of new housing and roads has played a part, too, because they affect how quickly the land drains. Roger refuses to be too downhearted: ‘We got over it last year. Somehow, we’ll get through it again.’
Back at the Willow and Wetlands Centre at Stoke St Gregory, Jonathan Coate is certainly angry – and not just with the Environment Agency. Being in an area of ‘special scientific interest’, he is constantly monitored by another quango, Natural England.
‘We haven’t heard a peep out of them, have we?’ he says. ‘This water is filthy. If it was me who had polluted any of it, they’d be down on me like a ton of bricks.’
But there is humour too. This Saturday, the centre has a ‘Welly Walk’ and willow bingo to raise funds for the local action group. There will be prizes for those in the ‘best-dressed welly boots’.
Looking out on Lake Somerset, I suspect they might be better off in waders.