Problem remains: how do we deal with all this water?
EARLIER this week I attended a rivers conference in which the assorted speakers wrestled over the same seemingly insurmountable problem: what to do with all this rain?
Fittingly, it streamed down the windows of the Liverpool conference centre where the delegates sat. As I write, it is tipping it down once again.
Brace yourselves for plenty more, as low-pressure weather systems roll our way across the Atlantic. Parts of the country may have already received their monthly quota, but there is little in the long-term forecast to suggest that things will dry up yet.
All the talk at the conference was on our inability to cope with the record rainfall and the vicious water cycle in which we are embroiled.
Currently it streams into combined sewers, rapidly overwhelming them and giving the water companies a green light to release yet more effluent into our rivers and oceans.
Overhauling the sewer network would cost untold billions we clearly do not have. Although with more than a trillion litres of water lost through broken or cracked pipes in England and Wales last year according to data from the regulator Ofwat, perhaps water companies could divert some profits to helping stem the flow?
Otherwise it is down to more creative solutions. Sustainable urban drainage schemes are seen as a useful defence. My home city of Sheffield boasts the longest retro-fit design in the UK – a snaking green meadow that runs along the River Don and soaks up excess rainfall as well as providing a flood prevention barrier.
China, however, is seen as the exemplar in the field, planting entire “sponge cities” of wetlands and trees that cope with even the most catastrophic downpour and boost water storage capacity when no rain falls.
Boom and bust, drought or deluge, these are the times in which we live. Perhaps millions of people across the South and Yorkshire may have forgotten this week, but technically a hosepipe ban is still in place…