A natural way to look at floods

We often design our WWT reserves to store rain water - like this field at Slimbridge
We often design our WWT reserves to store rain water - like this field at Slimbridge

WWT’s thoughts and best wishes are with those affected by Storm Desmond who are our immediate concern – including WWT supporters and volunteers.

Pressure to spend money on individual flood relief schemes is getting in the way of the Government finding long-term solutions for whole river catchments, says the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust.

The damage to homes and businesses caused in Cumbria and Lancashire by Storm Desmond this winter are the latest in an average of £1 billion flood damage suffered in England each year. The political debate after the floods is focussing on how much money the Government either spent or cut on individual relief schemes.

But WWT points out that many water management experts say flood risks can be eased in the first place by working with natural processes to slow down water flow – alongside the expensive concrete constructions that manage flooding once it’s happened.

WWT Head of Community Working Wetlands, Andy Graham told BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today:

“We need to think about working with the land, working with nature so that the land can soak up water before it creates a problem downstream. NGOs and farming communities are a long way along the line but we do need supporting and we need to be able to develop coherent solutions - land owners have to make a living.

“We need a package of intelligently designed support for land owners to deliver over and above food production, so they’re delivering flood risk management that will link the uplands to the lowlands.

“There are plenty of good examples out there - farmers doing it for themselves in Pont Bren, or the Pumlumon Project in mid-Wales - all of these are partnership approaches between farmers, conservationists and policy makers all looking to stop this rush of water off our slopes causing devastating results as we’ve seen with Storm Desmond.”

WWT is one of sixteen organisations who have joined together as Blueprint for Water to find ways to better manage water in England. In 2014, when the Government was under pressure to divert flood relief money into dredging, they produced a report called Floods and Dredging – a reality check which recommended:

“Working with nature, rather than against it, is sustainable both in terms of monetary cost and environmental impact. Such solutions – as well as proven ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ engineering – must lie at the heart of future strategies for mitigating flood risk. A catchment based approach provides by far the best platform for developing these strategies and the best chance to respond to the ever increasing threat of extreme floods as our climate changes.”

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