HUNG OUT TO DRY
With farmers and rural communities feeling abandoned to their fate, much more needs to be done to avoid a repeat of the devastation caused by this winter’s storms
How can farmers and rural communities be helped after the floods
What a drookit procession has blown across our land – storms Abigail, Barney, Desmond and Eva, followed by Frank, Gertrude and Imogen. It’s bad enough that the Met Office has endowed the most ferocious storms of the winter with such gentle and innocuous names: who would have thought Desmond would wreak such damage? Or that Frank would throw such a fit? But it has also listed the names for storms that have still to arrive: Storm Nigel, for heaven’s sake. And after him we’ll meet Phil, Rhonda, Vernon and windy Wendy, among others. The Met’s ruinous recital runs from A to Z, but without the Ys and Zs – for now.
Between November and mid-February no fewer than nine storms have blocked roads, felled trees, swept away bridges, flooded fields, wrecked farms and ruined homes.
The rationale for naming the storms was to help us distinguish between the passing of one ghastly gale and the arrival of another – just in case we thought it was simply one horrendous winter. The Met Office says that this is to help raise our awareness of severe weather – as if awareness of those icy blasts and torrential downpours had somehow passed us by.
Large parts of Scotland – from Dumfries and Galloway in the south-west to Aberdeenshire in the north-east – have taken a succession of batterings. December was the wettest in Scotland since records began in 1910, and the total rainfall throughout 2015 was the second highest on record. The flooding and damage wrought have caused major problems for farmers, estate owners and rural communities in general.
The overall cost of winter storm damage across the UK so far wrought by storms Desmond, Frank and Eva alone is reckoned at £1.3 billion. More than 3,000 families had to be found alternative accommodation.
The Association of British Insurers puts the average payout expected for each domestic flood claim at £50,000, substantially more than the average payout of £31,000 following the storms of winter 2013–14. Of the nearly 15,000 claims
for property damaged by flooding, more than a third have come from business customers.
The severe weather has already triggered two meetings of the Scottish government’s ‘resilience committee’ to assess t he impact and make recommendations to deal with the immediate havoc. And behind the initial dislocation and distress are bigger worries – the impact on infrastructure and rural businesses and the longer-term implications for Scotland’s economy and countryside as we seek ways of mitigating future damage.
We might not go along with the chilling warnings of ‘ man-made climate change’. But looking at the constant encroachment of building development, the regulations that have halted river dredging and the neglect of soakaways and drainage, it is hard not to believe that some of today’s flood damage has indeed been man-made.
NFU Scotland says the succession of winter flooding has highlighted the need for a new approach to help maximise the ability to farm, enhance protection for homes and businesses and secure environmental benefit. It hosted a meeting in mid-January on Bob Strachan’s Lochlands Farm in Perthshire with the cabinet secretary for rural affairs Richard Lochhead and Terry A’Hearn, chief executive of SEPA, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Lochlands Farm, along with many others, suffered severe flooding following Storm Frank. Thousands of acres were submerged, while fields that escaped were left sodden. Valuable topsoil has been stripped away, livestock has been lost and fences, buildings and farmhouses have been damaged. The immediate issues of concern include flood bank reinstatement, the works that are necessary to get land back into production and the impact on production that the flooding will have.
However, t he NFU Scotland warns that political commitment is key to finding the solutions needed to build resilience into our farming systems so that we can cope better with abnormal weather events. ‘This,’ says NFU Scotland, ‘will require a change in attitudes that will allow farmers to do the necessary required activities on watercourses to reduce the flood risk to farmland, homes and businesses.’
NFU Scotland’s president Allan Bowie commented: ‘The damage seen on Scottish farms across the country has been extensive and a great deal of work will be required to put right the damage. It is important that farmers know that SEPA and the Scottish Government now allow the reinstatement of flood banks without the requirement for any permissions. Doing more of the same is no longer an option. A new approach to watercourse management is what is required.’
His concerns echo the debate across the UK on man-made factors that have added to the problem and the actions that need to be taken.
’Doing more of the same is no longer an option. A new approach is needed’
Top of the list is greater control over building on flood plains. Some four million residential properties currently sit on land at risk of flooding, yet even after a government commissioned review by Sir Michael Pitt, large-scale building on floodplains has continued.
Arguments over dredging have been raging since the floods that devastated large parts of Somerset in 2013–14. Dredging removes the silt that builds up at the bottom of rivers, thus deepening the channel. This, say campaigners, helps the water flow faster and more efficiently. They accuse the European Water Framework Directive of preventing work being carried out.
But others argue that dredging would simply cause faster and more dangerous floods downstream. Environmentalist and writer George Monbiot says the flow of water should be slowed down and the rivers lengthened instead. One way of doing this is to make large bends in rivers. It is believed these twists and turns can help prevent flash floods from racing their way down at full force.
Many have also argued for the extensive planting of trees, as these can act as a natural flood defence – a hillside covered in thick vegetation tends to release water much more slowly than a bare hill. But England’s Environment Agency says large areas of trees would need to be replanted to make a difference and that flood defences on farmlands upstream might also not have had much effect in preventing the recent flooding.
Some also argue that, because of EU rules, there is not much incentive for farmers to keep land covered in thick vegetation. Land covered with ‘ permanent ineligible features’ such as ponds, dense scrub and some woodland can be disqualified from farm subsidies.
Then there is the political row over the budgets for flood barriers and the effectiveness of work so far. Carlisle’s flood-defence scheme was spectacularly breached despite having been constructed only five years before at a cost of £38m. And there was anger at the decision to lift York’s Foss Barrier, a key part of the city’s flood-defence system, because its pumps were so overwhelmed they were at risk of electrical failure.
What adds to concerns are studies showing that the UK overall is running out of land on which to grow food, and faces a potential shortfall of two million hectares by 2030. A University of Cambridge report warned that with population numbers expected to surpass 70 million by 2030, the extra demand for living space and food will have a major impact on the way land is used. On top of these pressures, the government is committed to using some crops as a source of renewable energy.
This, says the report’s lead author Andrew Montague-Fuller, ‘is putting some very significant future pressures on how we use our land. We may well find that there’s a large amount of the land being used for growing biofuels, or hosting solar panels and wind farms, when actually we need more land put aside for the food requirements of our growing population.’
Those winter storms, it seems, have left more than a trail of pretty names in their wake, bringing major problems that will take many years to address fully.
’ Carlisle’s flood defence scheme was spectacularly breached, despite having been constructed only five years before at a cost of £38m’