Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 28/01/2014
Event: "It's a disaster area down there. And it could have been avoided..."
Credit: BBC Radio 4
People:
Mishal Husain: The National Farmers Union in the south-west says that farmers are in a state of utter despair, after weeks of flooding. And, given the forecast of more rain, it doesn't look as though their predicament is about to change. The Environment Secretary is promising an action plan to produce a long-term solution, but has the protection of homes been prioritised over land? And should the Environment Agency have done more to try and ensure that the rivers could cope with the extra water flow? Well, Jean Venables, the Chief Executive of the Association of Drainage Authorities, is in the radio car. Good morning.
Jean Venables: Good morning.
Mishal Husain: What do you think of what we're seeing in the Somerset Levels, at the moment?
Jean Venables: It's a disaster area, down there. And it could have been avoided if we had actually kept up with maintenance on the rivers.
Mishal Husain: By which you mean things like dredging, clearing the rivers of silt.
Jean Venables: Yes, we've got a 20-year backlog of inactivity, down there. And it's actually very, very urgent that those rivers are dredged. There are other actions that can be taken as well, upstream of the catchment, but it's very important - when you've got an area of special drainage need - that you actually have an outlet. The river is actually the outlet to that drainage area, and it's got to have sufficient capacity to be able to drain that area.
Mishal Husain: The Environment Agency has a very different view on the effectiveness of - that dredging these rivers would have had, on the Somerset Levels, saying that given the amount of rain and the extreme rainfall that we've had in the last few weeks, it would not have prevented flooding on this land.
Jean Venables: This land regularly floods, and we all accept that. It is a floodplain. But the purpose of a floodplain is for it to take excess water, at the time of the storm, and then to drain away. You would expect a floodplain to drain away within a matter of days, and then be ready for the next flood. What is happening down there is that there is no capacity for it to drain away, and it is therefore accumulating, and we're seeing the disaster that that's causing.
Mishal Husain: So, even with this amount of rain, you think that this floodplain could have drained within days?
Jean Venables: It could, because if you've actually got effective drainage, then it keeps draining - if it drains as fast as it's coming, then you're not accumulating. Sometimes it does exceed the quantity, but it wouldn't happen as often, and it wouldn't stay there as long, if we had effective drainage.
Mishal Husain: Of course, at the moment, the pumps are operating around the clock - there's a massive operation that's under way to achieve exactly what you're after.
Jean Venables: Yes, but we shouldn't need to have to pump. It should actually work naturally and efficiently, as a drainage area. Because what we haven't got, at the moment, is 50% of the capacity of that river, to take the flow away from the area.
Mishal Husain: Well then, what do you think of the bigger picture, beyond - beyond dredging? What kind of system would cope with the extreme weather we're seeing at the moment? Not just an ordinary level of annual rainfall, but really extreme conditions, such as the ones we're having right now.
Jean Venables: You're right that we are having extreme conditions. We had twice the amount of average rainfall in December, we had January's rainfall - average rainfall - by the end of the first week. So we are facing very extreme conditions. And, although this is too early, yet, to say it is climate change, it's very indicative of what we're predicting, with the models of climate change. And therefore, we've got to be thinking about how we're going to manage that in the future, in these areas, and we've got to manage it better than we are at the moment.
Mishal Husain: And how - how would you do that?
Jean Venables: Well, we've got to invest in these areas. At the moment, the way in which the models work, to prioritise the money for investment, it doesn't go to these areas, and hasn't been, for the last 20 years. So we've really got to think very carefully about how we're going to play catch-up in there, in catching up on the maintenance that hasn't been done over 20 years. And restoring the capacities of the system, so that it can actually have much more resilience, and cope. Because what's happening down there is not just a disaster for people, for businesses, but also for wildlife and the environment. A lot of investment that has taken place over the last few years, developing the SSSIs [Sites of Special Scientific Interest] down there, has just been destroyed, and we just need to help that recover.
Mishal Husain: All right. Jean Venables, thank you, and we'll be speaking to the head of the Environment Agency, Lord Smith, at 8:10.
* * *
Cathy Clugston: One of the UK's biggest offshore wind farms is to start generating electricity for the first time. The West of Duddon Sands Array is eight miles off the coast of Cumbria. When finished, its 108 turbines will produce enough power for almost 300,000 homes.
Mishal Husain: Cathy Clugston. It's 8:10. It's been a painful start to the year, for flood-hit communities in Somerset. Pumps are operating 24 hours a day to drain farmland of water that is estimated to be enough to fill 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This has been a period of extreme weather, and more rain is forecast. But there are questions for the Environment Agency, about whether it could have been better handled, including whether cleaning out the rivers, and regular maintenance, could have helped cope with the volume of the floodwaters. Here's a glimpse of how local people say they have been affected, including their views on the Environment Agency and on the visit yesterday, to Somerset, by the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson.
Woman 1 [shouting]: Why was this not done, ages ago?! Why have you only started doing this now?!
Woman 2: We're not being told anything. What the hell's going on? We've been like this for three weeks, going on and on and on and on... And that's why he's here today. That's why we've got extra pumps yesterday. It's why it looks so tidy here. This time last night, it didn't look like this.
Man 1: This is the second year in a row, now, and we've been banging on, to the Agency. They've done no maintenance on the rivers for 20 years. Yet again, I was shouting out for pumps, a week before Christmas, and they said "No, no, we've got plenty of time, we're not going to flood."
Ian Liddle-Grainger: Every excuse you can think of - this is an out-of-control quango... What galls my constituents... is: they found £31 million to build a bird sanctuary at the mouth of the Parrett river, yet they cannot and will not find £5 million to dredge this river... And it's just shown that the river's now 40% below capacity. Once it's dredged, we can then maintain it... But the Environment Agency has to stop this mucking around, and get on with it.
Mishal Husain: And the last voice there was Ian Liddle-Grainger, the MP for Bridgwater, speaking to us on yesterday's programme. Well, in the radio car now is Chris Smith, Lord Smith, the Chair of the Environment Agency. Good morning.
Lord Smith: Good morning.
Mishal Husain: Let's talk first about specific issues in the Somerset Levels. Do you think dredging would have made a difference to what we're seeing now?
Lord Smith: Well, before I come to dredging - and I will, in just a moment - can I just say something very important, first. And that is there are one or two people, including Mr. Liddle-Grainger, over the last few days, who've been throwing a lot of brickbats at the Environment Agency and its staff. And I just want to say that these are staff who, over the course of the last two months, have been working their socks off, night and day, right the way through Christmas and through New Year. They've been running pumping stations, they've been erecting demountable defences, they've been coordinating information for the Emergency Services, they've been providing warnings where they're needed, they've been clearing blockages, they have been working their hearts out. And in the process, they have protected over a million homes from being flooded -
[Lord Smith and Mishal Husain now speak simultaneously.]
Mishal Husain: Yes, but I'm sure you can appreciate the anger of communities that have been under water for this length of time.
Lord Smith: - during that period, including - including - including three and a half thousand in Somerset. Now, getting to Somerset, none of that, of course, diminishes the terrible impact that flooding has had on the Somerset Levels, something like 65 square kilometres of land under water, and some villages completely cut off. Um, and I -
Mishal Husain: Correct, so could we just go through some of the specific issues, then - would dredging have made a difference?
Lord Smith: Dredging would, er, probably make a small difference. It's not the comprehensive answer that some people have been claiming it is. It's why we began, back in October, November last year, to dredge some of the particular choke points on the River Tone and the River Parrett, because it can, I believe, make a contribution to solving some of these problems.
Mishal Husain: All right. If -
Lord Smith: It's not - it's not a wholesale solution. And we need to look at a whole range of other things, as well.
Mishal Husain: Right, because I'm sure you heard the local voices there, that we ran a moment ago. And people in the area affected, along the Tone and Parrett rivers, they're saying there's been no dredging there for 20 years, that there's been a 20-year backlog.
Lord Smith: Well, the, um, er, what's - what's been happening, of course, is that over the course of that period, we've had a lot of pumping work going on, whenever there has been flooding. We've been making sure that the water is flowing as best it can. Er, now, it is quite possible that dredging will be part of the solution, but I must emphasise, only part of the solution - it's not the wholesale answer that some people are claiming that it will be.
Mishal Husain: Well, the - but the Association of Drainage Authorities, who we spoke to, an hour ago, said that had you been systematically clearing these rivers, over a period of time, then they think the pumping, that's going on now, would have managed to drain the area completely, within days.
Lord Smith: It would not have solved the problems that we're facing at the moment. And we've got 65 pumps, at the moment, working right the way around the clock - huge amounts of water being pumped out. The - the Somerset Levels are a completely unique landscape. It's largely reclaimed land. A very large quantity of it is below sea level. It also has the problem of the Severn Estuary, which - because it's got such a high tidal range - backs the water up the rivers, on occasion. And this requires unique answers. And that's why I very much welcome the Secretary of State's request, yesterday, for the Environment Agency, the Local Authorities and the Drainage Boards, to get together to see if we can come up with a comprehensive solution. It's not going to be a simplistic one, it's not just saying "If we dredge, it will solve all our problems" -
Mishal Husain: No, but -
Lord Smith: - but dredg- dredging the Tone and the Parrett, I think will be part of that comprehensive solution.
Mishal Husain: The broader feeling, that many of the people who work this land and who own the land in this area have, is that the emphasis from the Environment Agency is on property, is on homes, and that the protection of land falls by the wayside, somehow - you don't see that as much of a priority.
Lord Smith: Well, it's our legal duty to protect life and property first. And that, in any sensible scheme of things, has to be the priority. Now, yes, agricultural land also matters, and we need to do whatever we possibly can, within the limited resources we have available, tp ensure that agricultural land is protected, especially where it's very rich and very productive. But I have to say: life and people's homes have to come first.
Mishal Husain: Well, on the subject, then, of limited resources, you know, we know that your agency is facing cuts - something like 1,500 jobs are going to go. How would you explain, then, to people how you are going to manage this, this year? Where will you make the choices, how will you allocate the limited resources that you have left?
Lord Smith: Well, this, of course, is the - is the difficult set of choices that anyone running a public service organisation, at the moment, faces. Like the whole of the public sector, we are facing financial constraints. We're doing that in the best and most methodical way that we can. We're taking as much as we possibly can out of all the back-office services. We're trying to protect the frontline services as much as we can. And an absolutely red line for us, in the Environment Agency, is that we have to be able to maintain our ability to respond to flooding emergencies in - wherever they're happening and at whatever time.
Mishal Husain: That is a bit different from what your chief executive has said, that government cuts will impact on how the organisation deals with flooding, that "flood risk maintenance will be further impacted. All of our work on mapping and modelling and new developments in... flood warning will also have to be resized" - so there will be an impact.
Lord Smith: What he has said very clearly is that our response to flooding emergencies must be protected and will be protected. There is other work, preparing for that, doing the mapping and modelling work - yes, some of that is likely to be affected. We will try as best as we possibly can to protect as much of that as we possibly can, but what we've got to do is look across the country, including in Somerset, at what we can do better, at what the comprehensive solutions, together with partners, not just the Environment Agency - the county councils, the district councils, the drainage boards - we all have to work together to see what together we can do to make sure that we solve some of these very difficult, very impactful problems.
Mishal Husain: Okay, you hope that you'll be able to maintain your emergency response, at least. I want to ask you what you thought of David Cameron when he was speaking yesterday about cutting red tape for business, because amongst the red tape that he cut were a whole raft of - pages and pages, really - of environmental guidance, hundreds of pages of guidance on cattle movement, on hedgerow regulations, waste management, all kinds of environmental issues. What did you think, when you heard him cut all of that?
Lord Smith: Well, a lot of that is work that we have presented to him, as ways of reducing unnecessary regulation. The important thing is to make sure that the proper protections are in place - to stop land and water being poisoned by chemicals, for example, to make sure that industrial pollution doesn't affect human health, to -
Mishal Husain: So you didn't have any - over a thousand pages of environmental guidance - so they won't be missed at all, then?
Lord Smith: They - what we've done is we've concentrated our guidance into much shorter, much clearer, much more effective ways. We do need to preserve environmental protections. What we need to do is make sure they're smart, they're easy to understand, they're well-adminstered and there's not unnecessary paperwork involved.
Mishal Husain: So when -
Lord Smith: That's what we've been doing, very closely with the government, in making sure that he's able to make sort of announcements.
Mishal Husain: So just to be clear, when Friends of the Earth say that the government is making the environment a "scapegoat" for our economic challenges, they're wrong, are they?
Lord Smith: What the government has been doing, with our assistance and engagement, actively over the course not just of this government but it began quite a lot of time before that, is to make sure that what we have in place is effective regulation, not just paperwork for the sake of having paperwork.
Mishal Husain: Chris Smith, Chair of the Environment Agency, thank you.