This time last year we were enduring one of the coldest winters in recent memory, writes Chris Carter.
Little over a year later we are still suffering the effects of one of the wettest winters we’ve experienced; only in these parts it seems that successive weather events have led our local authorities and more particularly IDBs to take positive steps to alleviate the misery of flooding.
I’m often asked why, in an area where much of our land is at or below sea level, we never appear to be flooded. Since the major deluge of 1947, many wonderful schemes have been put in place to ensure we never have to suffer flooding again. One thinks of the Coronation Channel and the many improvements carried out by our IDBs to get water away quickly from farm ditches, into local watercourses and then into Commissioner’s Drains.
There is absolutely no doubt as to the effectiveness of all their work and that of the Environment Agency, which deals with many of our river systems. How concerning then to hear of government plans to reduce funding for flood defence, more particularly on farmland, and to concentrate on the voting heartlands of the flooded south-east.
If only the planners would refuse applications on natural flood plains and discourage the never ending concreting over of many urban areas they may well find that nature might assist them rather than causing misery to so many people.