Fields are preventing floods on the cheap

Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger warns Environment Secretary Steve Barclay farmers will soon need to be compensated for storing floodwater

DEAR Steve, It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was writing to one of your predecessors bemoaning the lack of water storage facilities at this end of the country and the potentially devastating effects a long-term drought would have on domestic supplies.

Obviously the rain gods routinely steam open my emails because within a couple of months they turned on the tap and indeed have kept it running pretty well ever since. To the extent where the pendulum has now swung to the other extreme and the problem is a surplus of water rather than any lack.

Not a good situation for farmers in any part of the country who have had to keep livestock off sodden ground and whose planting regimes have been put on hold – with the commensurate warning that harvest yields are likely to be adversely affected this year. But down here in Somerset where so much land is at or below sea level the problems have been magnified to the extent where fields disappeared under water months ago and have yet to reemerge. Many farmers are thus facing the likelihood that their incomes will be absolutely decimated this year – and that at a time when they are already trying to cope with reductions in direct support.

The point is this, Steve. Those fields are acting as temporary storage for water which would otherwise be inundating properties in towns and villages.

I remember the astonishment expressed by one farming family some years ago when they discovered much of their land had been officially designated as a ‘reservoir’ on a map.

But it now appears that thousands of acres across the Somerset Levels are fulfilling that very role, so saving town and village from inundation and devastation. So since their owners are now clearly delivering a public service, they need to be compensated. It is, after all, clearly stated Government policy that farmers should be rewarded for delivering public goods.

The definition of a public good is “something which is to the benefit or wellbeing of the public”. And so clearly the alleviation of flooding falls comfortably within that category. It is only right that if we are allowing flooding to impinge on farmers’ profitability then some kind of recompense is necessary.

It will, if nothing else, allow them to remain farming and caring for the land during those months when it is possible to do so without the use of scuba gear.

Alternatively if the Government will be content with the spectacle of a scrubby unattractive, brambleinfested wilderness for those periods of the year when the land is dry, then we need to put a regime in place whereby those farmers can sell the Government their land for a properly arbitrated sum and simply move elsewhere.

At the moment we appear to be achieving flood prevention by stealth and on the cheap and I find that whole process somewhat distasteful. Yours ever,

Ian

Ben Birchall/PA > Flooded fields by the River Parrett at Somerset Levels near Bridgwater in Somerset