Daily Mail, Thursday, March 5, 2020^ Page 332020
2014 2020
you can
turn back
The Somerset Levels were
devastated by floods in 2014.
So how have they survived this
year’s deluges? Answer: by
ignoring modern eco-zealots
and using simple ideas of old
rivers and coastline fell under the
remit of the Environment Agency,
formed in 1995.
The work of local drainage boards
was hampered by the new agency’s
zealous enforcement of EU waste-
removal regulations, with habitat
directives placing ‘sustainability’
and ‘biodiversity’ ahead of the
n e e d t o s a f e g u a r d h o m e s ,
businesses and farmland.
These Brussels-concocted rules
made it almost impossible to dis-
pose of tonnes of dredged-up silt.
Matters worsened considerably
after 2000, as many locals recall,when Baroness Young of Old
Scone, a Labour peeress who had
previously run the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds and
Natural England, became chief
executive of the EA.
Intent on creating havens where
wildlife could flourish, she deter-
mined to transform the Levels into
a vast wetland suitable for water-
voles and wading birds.
To this end, she actively pro -
moted flooding by withdrawing
funds for dredging and pumping.
If she had her way, she remarked,
she would plant ‘a limpet-mine onevery pumping station’. Indeed, in
a lecture to a House of Lords
Committee, she said her recipe was
cheap and simple: ‘For instant
wildlife, just add water’.
However, people living on the
Levels will tell you that her tenure
was a recipe for disaster.
Baroness Young is unmoved. She
insists that dredging has not
stopped the Levels flooding.
‘ T h e S o m e r s e t L e v e l s w e r e
intended to be flood plains,’ she
says. ‘Dredging the Levels for farm-
ing at all costs is not my idea of a
balanced solution. You have got totake into account issues of biodi-
versity and climate change. I feel I
have been vindicated quite sub-
stantially over the past few years.
‘People were desperate just to do
something, but dredging doesn’t
solve anything. It just moves the
flow of water down to the next
pinch point.
‘What was always needed was
systems... that hold back the flow
of water, so that it comes down
gradually, rather than in a rush.
‘These effective solutions that I
was thinking about in my time at
the EA are what people are now
talking about. So I am not lying
awake thinking I have done some-
thing wrong.’
A bold assertion. However, by
2012, two years before the tumul-
tuous floods, Mrs Sadler, who lives
in Moorland, near Bridgwater, and
other Levels residents were so con-
cerned by rising water levels they
formed a pressure group to lobby
for a resumption of silt dredging.
A local farmer also wrote to then
Prime Minister David Cameron,
warning of impending disaster.
Their pleas fell on deaf ears. The
result was a flood so devastating
that it cost Somerset £200 million
in lost tourism revenue alone.
Ruined farmland and crops, dam-
age to property, and the massive
evacuation and mopping-up opera-
tion cost hundreds more millions.
It also cost then Environment
Secretary Owen Paterson his job.
Partly because he was ridiculed by
the media for wearing town shoes,
rather than wellingtons, when he
went to inspect the flooded Levels,
Mr Cameron deemed Paterson to
have ‘had a bad flood’ and sacked
him soon afterwards.
In the eyes of many Levels-dwell-
ers, however, the North Shropshire
MP is a hero. Mrs Sadler, for one,
says she ‘adores him’.
For while Mr Cameron was seen
flitting about in a helicopter, and
delivered suitable soundbites,
Paterson instigated an innovative
and effective action plan.
It was implemented that same
summer, soon after the floodwater
had subsided — a refreshing depar-
t u r e g i v e n t h a t g o v e r n m e n t
schemes are usually mired for aneternity in red-tape. Though dredg-
ing was recommenced, after 20
years, there is far more to it than
that. New pumping stations have
been built, sumps dug to hold
excess water, sluice-gates put in
place; some villages are now pro-
tected by walls known as ‘bunds’.
Further upstream, the cascade of
river water has been slowed by
erecting barriers called ‘leaky
dams’, planting more trees, and
encouraging farms to plough the
land so that run-off sinks into it.
In all, 150 preventative actions
have been taken, overseen by the
Somerset Rivers Authority, a body
which Mr Paterson also created.
By 2024, his plan should have its
pièce de résistance: a £100 million
tidal barrier stretching across the
River Parrett estuary.
Much of this is being funded by a
special levy added to Somerset’s
council tax; some residents outside
the Levels object to paying this.
Yet floods indirectly affect every-
one in the county by hitting the
local economy and transport, and
it is cheaper to fund improvements
than repair widespread damage.
All this is a salutary reminder to
Boris Johnson and Mr Eustice —
who have faced criticism in recent
days for their tardy response to the
floods — of what can be done with
sufficient drive and good will.
When I spoke to Mr Paterson this
week, he was clearly still angry at
being scapegoated by Cameron,
and dismissed as the ‘Wally with-
out Wellies’ (‘I had two pairs with
me in the car,’ he fumed).
In truth, he said, he had rushed
to the Levels of his own accord
when the full extent of the disaster
became evident.
Looking for solutions, he con-
sulted farmers and landowners. A
broad outline of the emergency
plan was written that same night.
‘It is all about listening to the peo-
ple who really know how to manage
the countryside,’ he told me,
suggesting the same should be done
at the latest flood flashpoints.t
HOUgH this is disputed
by some engineers, he
believes the fundamentals
o f h i s L e v e l s f l o o d
pr e v e n t i o n p l a n w o u l d
apply elsewhere.
‘It’s like having a huge bath with
a blocked plughole. If you just
un-bung it, the water will drain
away,’ he says.
Mr Paterson is scathing of Baron-
ess Young’s ‘catastrophic’ policies,
and dismissive of those who argue
that flooding is the inevitable
result of climate change, implying
that it cannot be eradicated.
With Britain having just left the
EU, he argues, we have the oppor-
tunity to manage the environment,
free of European diktat. In this, he
is looking to his successor, Mr
Eustice, to take a strong lead.
Is he doing enough to fight the
floods? ‘He’s only been in the job a
few weeks — give him a chance!’
Back in her renovated old rectory,
Bryony Sadler agrees that other
flood-hit areas could learn from
experiences on the Levels.
‘There’s no point deciding what
to do from an office in London,’ she
says. ‘You have got to engage with
the community.
Earlier this week, her heart sank
when a nearby river suddenly rose.
It happened because two of the
four pumps were switched off, she
says. When the EA was alerted,
they were turned on again.
‘It shows how the flooding we had
in 2014 could happen again without
proper management,’ she says.
‘If the people in power hadn’t
listened to us, we might have been
in the same situation as the rest of
the country this week.
‘But if they stop maintaining the
rivers in the Levels, it could happen
again here, too.’Unscathed: The Somerset Levels
this week and (top left) in 2014 —
the church is at the back. Left,
David Jones in the lane you had
to row down in 2014 (far left)