Dredging Of The Ouse
By Paul Homewood
A very interesting letter in the Telegraph today:
SIR – This week the Environment Agency has been dredging the streams and ditches around here, ensuring that groundwater flows more rapidly into the River Swale – which, like its co-tributary of the Ouse, the Ure, is embanked across the Vale of York to prevent floodwater from spreading out over agricultural land.
This will inevitably cause more floods in the centre of York, either now or later in the year, as the estuary of the Ouse downstream of the city is not dredged, to conform with the EU Water Framework Directive of 2000.
Will Michael Gove have the courage of his predecessor as environment secretary, Owen Paterson, who, when there were devastating floods in Somerset in 2014, ignored the EU and ordered that the river estuaries there be dredged, which produced immediate improvement?
Hugh Gillespie
Thrintoft, North Yorkshire
I claim no particular knowledge about these matters, but I suspect there is more than an element of truth in the letter.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yep.
Ignore the EU altogether.
I would suggest do the opposite of what the EU imposes on us. Probably 97% of its regulations are based on fake science and the regulations never consider the unintended consequences.
Unintended consequences of EU policies often blamed on ‘Climate Change’
Click to access b812d147771d659fef3340e49f4197178215.pdf
There has been a wholesale lack of maintenance of waterways from the smallest private ditches through to our main rivers for many decades. The result has been a loss of storage capacity and the ability of water to flow into the oceans. The treatment of the ditch and watercourses as primarily flora and fauna habitats rather than functional parts of our land drainage system has further discouraged proper maintenance. For example many roadside ditches have within living memory fallen inwards, become shallower and have been colonised by shrubs and trees to the extent that they no longer resemble ditches at all. No wonder we have flooded roads and land!
My parish council reminds owners of ditches and streams to clear them at this time of year. Local people working for the people, while the Tory scum in the borough council want to build a 4000 home new town on the fields with no thought for infrastructure.
One of the additional little ‘benefits’ of our EU membership is that ALL dredged material from ditches and rivers must be classified as ‘toxic waste’ which triples the cost of ‘safe’ disposal.
When we leave (when??) on 29th March with an excellent ‘no deal’, we can cease to pay attention to any of Brussels’ BS. But has George Useless got the balls to do this?
If I might suggest that, the Kafkaesque illogicality of dredging and clearing river/stream beds upstream without first opening and deepening the lower reaches of a river basin system – it kinda sums up our dreadful administration. The bird brained Environmental Agency provides in synopsis, in its quite appalling forwards planning demonstrates, its woeful contingency, a defective mindset and an almost brain numbing incompetency. It is however, reflected right across her majesty’s so called government.
An excellent precis of our weird government and with Gove, around it can only get worse!
Don’t flatter it by calling it illogical, it’s post-modernist. As long as you can think it, it can be true!
Winter rainfall causes floods (obvs). But the deliberate policy of gvumint made events in Somerset significantly worse in 2014
More here : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/flooding/10655005/The-flooding-of-the-Somerset-Levels-was-deliberately-engineered.html
Unlike Paul, I do have some knowledge on this subject. Certainly in Scotland, where I farm, river and drain clearing and maintenance has been virtually banned for years. Why? Because its not ‘natural’
Recent disastrous flooding in Carlisle, for example, is almost entirely due to the incompetent desk jockeys, stopping farmers and drainage contractors doing what they have done for literally hundreds of years. The results of these unbelievably stupid policies are now coming home to roost.
Other countries ignore any EU legislation that does n’t suit them-we gold plate their directives and follow them to the letter. Of course rivers must be dredged to prevent flooding-what’s more important- disturbing a few birds or preventing the centre of York from flooding??
More here too: http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84683
And yet more: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/16/the-real-reason-for-flooding-in-somerset-levels-not-global-warming-the-only-pump-was-turned-off/
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, (Dee estuary mud flats) this problem repeated all over the world fills inland waterways, then estuaries, impacting on inward tidal movement and results in sea level rises.
Those who deal with water whether standing or flowing (and woodlands & forests, for that matter) as part of their jobs will tell that they need to be continually managed. Nature will overgrow if left alone and will impact or even force out human inhabitants.
EU and directives from other bodies appear to be well-intentioned for wildlife but inevitably result in a clash with the needs of human inhabitants when applied carpet-fashion in a completely blinkered manner.
What happened to Owen Paterson after he did this and other correct moves for this country?
He was binned! Being practically minded, knowledgeable of the subject for which he was given overall responsibility, pragmatic and enterprising and, of course, anathema to the green blob, made him wholly unsuited to swing votes for the conservatives in key non-marginals like Islingistan. Not that they were going to win any extra votes there anyway. But, hey ho, his sacrifice kept the sjw’s away from the door for all of 5 mins. Great, smashing, super. Looks like Gove has learnt his lesson from Patterson’s demise and sold his soul to the greenies from the outset. Bah humbug!
A report by the Carlisle flood action group stated their main conclusion that the flooding on December 5th 2015 was NOT due to unprecedented rainfall or climate change, but due to rivers mismanagement.
If you have 200-300 years of river management and build towns, cities, roads, farns etc. based on that management,then changing that management is going to cause serious problems for those towns, cities and farms.
I am at a loss to understand why that is such a difficult concept to grasp for our rulers?
It’s the Menchen philosophy of keeping people in state of panic. If the PTB do nothing it saves money. They can justify doing nothing because climate change is not a local problem. By doing nothing they get flooding, fires, etc, which they can blame on climate change. If they have climate change they can do nothing. QED.
It’s my view that Officialdom in the UK applies guidelines as law and rules as if they’d been sent from God written on tablets of stone. The other EU nations are more pragmatic in how they apply these things. Of course the bean counters are in favour of not spending, especially if there is a handy scapegoat to blame and in particular an unpopular one.
The UK public bureaucrats have never faced the wrath of the public, it was the king who lost his head at the end of the civil war, and Mrs Thatcher who carried the can for the poll tax they feel and appear to be invulnerable.
Surely the only sensible way to dredge a river is to start at the estuary mouth and work upstream?
As a resident of Fens I have witnessed the deterioration of our drainage first hand! I operated a Haulage for 40 years my lorries went through the village of Welney many times a week, never in all those years did we have the road.closed by flooding. The drainage was undertaken by engineers of the Gt Ouse river board, men of knowledge and skill.Since our membership of The EU or economically useless,it is now managed thr Environment Agency, The road through the Village is closed for several weeks a year,causing many miles of diversion to get to Ely and Downham Market bringing huge fuel increases for the transport of goods, people getting to work and Children to school. I have been told by anglers who fished local waters at a depths of 6 fo 9 feet, are now bottoming out at 3 feet!,
A Happy Christmas and a Healthy 2019 to all!