20140205_R4

Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme

URL: N/A

Date: 05/02/2014

Event: Lord Krebs: flooding and extreme weather "likely to become more common in the future"

Credit: BBC Radio 4

People:

• Dylan Davies: Pupil, Stebonheath School
• Roger Harrabin: BBC's Environment Analyst
• Lord Krebs: John Krebs, zoologist, Chair of the CCC Adaptation Subcommittee
• Caitlin Thomas: Pupil, Stebonheath School
• Justin Webb: Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today programme
• Steve Wilson: Wastewater Director, Welsh Water

Justin Webb: We’ve built homes and superstores on floodplains, we’ve paved gardens and drained bogs which used to catch water, and replaced woodlands with sheep farms which compact the soil and straightened winding rivers, we’ve made them flow faster. And all of this, we are told, is contributing to flooding. We are told this by the Committee on Climate Change and we’re also told by them today that it has to stop. The Committee says we need to catch water in upstream areas, it warns that half a billion pounds of extra funding needs to be spent in the next four year period to keep pace, just to keep pace, with the risk of climate change affecting the UK. We’ll speak to the Committee in a second, first let’s hear from our environment analyst, Roger Harrabin, who’s been to Llanelli in South Wales, where they’re spending £40 million on reengineering the streets to prevent flooding.

Roger Harrabin: I’m near the centre of Llanelli, and as you might expect it has been raining and I’m here to see a scheme where Welsh Water are digging up the pavements to prevent floods. I’m joined by Steve Wilson from Welsh Water. Steve, can you explain to me what you’re doing?

Steve Wilson: We’re trying to take the surface water, the rainfall that comes off the house roofs, the roads, out of the sewerage network, find ways back into the environment, to really prevent flooding.

Roger Harrabin: So, what exactly are you doing here behind us?

Steve Wilson: So, we’ve hollowed out the ground, put a depression in the ground, we’re going to fill that with soil, and that will soak the water in that would run down this hill, and instead of going into the sewer network, it will soak it into the ground.

Roger Harrabin: And it looks like you’ve made holes in the curb so the water will come sideways out of the gutter and into this, this sort of holding system that you’ve built.

Steve Wilson: Exactly, you can imagine with the heavy rain here in Wales it pours down the roads, and if we can get it to pour off the road into this planting area and soak into the media that we’ve put in the ground there. This scheme here should take out 22,500 cubic metres of rainfall every year out of the sewers.

Roger Harrabin: How can you be confident of that?

Steve Wilson: The flow monitors and the design work that we’ve done is already showing us that actually some of the schemes we put in taking out more water than we actually first envisaged. This is the answer for us, building more bigger pipes or bigger, deeper tanks, that we are reaching the capacity of them too soon, this is a much more sustainable way of preventing flooding.

Roger Harrabin: I’ve now come up to Stebonheath School, just round the corner where they’ve got another innovative flood management scheme. And I’m joined by...

Dylan Davies: Dylan Davies.

Roger Harrabin: And...

Caitlin Thomas: Caitlin Thomas.

Roger Harrabin: What have you been doing here, guys?

Caitlin Thomas: We’ve been, we’ve been, we’ve been making a swale, to stop all the floods from the drain.

Roger Harrabin: What’s a swale?

Caitlin Thomas: The... the grass...

Roger Harrabin: This grassy dip in the ground here. So what happens, the water runs off the playground...

Caitlin Thomas: Yeah.

Dylan Davies: Yeah, and it comes from, when it rains it goes onto the roof, then all the rain comes off the roof down into the swale, and the swale all the water and like, and pushes it off into the drain gently [?]

Roger Harrabin: And is there a big difference, can you see the difference when it rains?

Dylan Davies and Caitlin Thomas: Yes.

Caitlin Thomas: A lot of difference.

Roger Harrabin: What did it use to be like?

Caitlin Thomas: It used to be all flooded, this area... we weren’t allowed to come by here, because it was all wet and puddles everywhere.

Roger Harrabin: And it looks good, as well.

Dylan Davies and Caitlin Thomas: Yeah.

Dylan Davies: Definitely.

Roger Harrabin: Well, Welsh Water think this scheme is applicable not just here, but right across the country - they think it will save water companies money, and they think it will be more effective at preventing floods. And the children at this school will learn, unlike their parents, that climate change is predicted to bring more extreme weather in future and to raise the sea level, so they may consider using the land differently to the way their parents did.

* * *

Justin Webb: Hmm. Roger Harrabin, in Llanelli. Lord Krebs is Chair of the Adaptation Subcommittee, part of the Committee on Climate Change, and is on the line from Oxford. Good morning.

Lord Krebs: Good morning.

Justin Webb: I don't know how much of that report you heard. You would say, would you, presumably, that what they're doing in Llanelli ought to be a model for the whole of the rest of the country.

Lord Krebs: I thought it was a wonderful project, that your reporter Roger Harrabin described, in Llanelli. The fact is that what we're experiencing now, in terms of flooding and extreme weather, is likely to become more common in the future, as a result of climate change. And it's time now to plan ahead, to make our country more resilient, to move from clean-up, and the dreadful damage that occurs to people's homes and livelihoods, to prevention - to make our country more resilient. And, at the moment, we're not really doing that, we're going in the wrong direction.

Justin Webb: Does that mean, for instance, that you ban people from paving over their front gardens?

Lord Krebs: Well, the fact is that the hard surfaces in our towns and cities have increased hugely, almost doubled in the last decade or so, because people are paving over front gardens. You can, of course, use absorbent paving surfaces, so it's not actually the case that just because you pave over, you're going to have more water runoff. But we - if we - really a choice that we as a country have to make, if we want to make our country more resilient, we're going to have to make some difficult decisions to prevent the kind of thing that's happening now happening more frequently in the future.

Justin Webb: But, just to make it clear, you're saying to the government: it is time to make those difficult decisions, it's time to say to people "We are going to enforce planning regulations, whatever they be, about paving your gardens" and the various other things that might be discussed - it's time to enforce them centrally, because this matters so much.

Lord Krebs: Well, we are building in flood plains - 13% of all new developments, in the last decade or so, has been in flood plain areas. The Environment Agency has a responsibility, a statutory responsibility, for advising on whether a development should go ahead, so there are regulations in place. The problem we identified is that in about a third of cases, the Environment Agency never finds out whether their advice has been followed. So it's not necessarily about new regulations, it's about ensuring that existing rules are being enforced on -

Justin Webb: Yeah, but the onus is also put on developers now, isn't it, rather more than on the Agency, and that's been something that the government's consciously done, and you're saying now it should consciously undo.

Lord Krebs: Well, as I say, there is a regulatory framework in place - the Environment Agency is a statutory consultee for any development , and it can comment on the potential flood risks. However, these are decisions about risk now and risk in the future, and if the government wants to say to people: "Look, we are just going to be exposed to more flooding risk, and you're going to have to experience this", that's fine. But I think we need to be transparent and have an open discussion about how these decisions are made. There's also a role, of course, for individual householders, because if people do live in a flood-risk area, there are measures that they can take to make their house more resilient by having, for example, flood-resistant ground-floor fittings, fitting water-guards in front of doors and over air bricks, and so on. So there are measures that individuals can take, that local authorities can take, and that central government's decisions can help to -

Justin Webb: Are you frustrated that so much of the discussion, in the last few days, has been about dredging, and whether or not there have been enough dredging in Somerset - in other words, is the focus on that taking our mind, in your view, off what we should be focussing on?

Lord Krebs: I think dredging may well be part of the story, but there is, as I say, a much bigger picture, about: do we want to make our country more resilient? To the kind of weather that we've experienced in the last month or so, that is likely to get more common, as a result of climate change.

Justin Webb: Trouble is, you use that word "likely", and a lot of people will say: "Well, yes, it may happen, but it may not, as well, and weather is, you know, unpredictable - we might well go into a period where none of these things that you're suggesting happen do happen, and we will have spent an awful lot of money and then wasted it".

Lord Krebs: Well, all we can do is go on the best available science, and the climate scientists who have looked at this, using the best models and the best evidence available, suggest to us that the weather is likely to become more stormy, more unpredictable in the future, and the kind of extreme weather events that we're experiencing now, rather than being perhaps a one in a hundred year event, may become a one in twenty year event. We can't be absolutely sure of the detail, but it's sensible, in my view, to take precautions.

Justin Webb: Lord Krebs, thank you very much.