South west and Wales braced for more floods as ‘perfect storm’ looms

– Worst flooding in 20 years for Somerset Levels, where 65 sq km is under water
– New weather warnings for many southern and western areas
– Six severe flood warnings – meaning danger to life – in force along coastlines of Cornwall, North Devon, Somerset, Plymouth

For over 30 years Chris Osborne was out and about on the Levels fixing and maintaining the “clues”, the intricate network of sluices that controlled the of the Somerset flood plains, writes Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson from Somerset.

“Now you’d be pushed to find the old clues – they’re long neglected and mostly buried under silt,” he tells me.

He calls himself a “water man” even in retirement, and was a dredger man too.

He has little time for the way conservation issues have been at the heart of the policy of not dredging rivers on the Levels from the time when the Environment Agency took over from the old National Rivers Authority.

Latest updates
– Environment Agency has almost 100 flood warnings across England and Wales, 200 less serious flood alerts
– Six severe flood warnings – meaning danger to life – in force along coastlines of Cornwall, North Devon, Somerset, Plymouth
– Met Office warns of heavy rain and high winds of up to 60mph for many southern and western areas until Saturday
– High tides will leave coastal areas in south west at risk – and parts of south-east England, north west, Yorkshire and Hull coast will also be affected
– Wettest January on record for parts of southern England
– Click here for the latest weather warnings and here to get the latest forecast from Liam Dutton

Chris Osborne insists they never dredged during the spawning season for fish and says there was every bit as much wildlife in the rivers when he was at work as there is now.

Furthermore, he says that rivers across the Levels have long been “canal-ised” – straightened, banked and dredged – and have not been natural rivers here for centuries.

Residents in Somerset insist they are not on a flood plain – it’s lack of dredging

— alex thomson (@alextomo) January 31, 2014

Conservation bodies like the RSPB all disagree with that point of view, but with dredging the Levels now the stuff of prime ministerial intervention it is clear that the floods have washed up a major conservation issue.

Meanwhile the incessant forecast rain is falling here in this weird quiet landscape of bland lakes, floating walkways, scheduled boat services to villages and road after road that ends in a complete superfluous sign stating that it is closed by a flood.

With spring tides forecast and the rain continuing, the army is on standby – though all that smacks more of a PM desperate to do something, rather than meeting the actual needs of those inundated. The army have not deployed.

Dredging debate

And meanwhile, the banner on the bridge at Boroughbridge demands that the rivers of the Somerset Levels be drained again after a generation of neglecting it.

That demand meets a sympathetic ear from some unlikely quarters. The local RSPB official Mark Robbins says people living here must come first: “We welcome dredging here, sympathetically managed, and any disruption to wildlife can be managed. Nature quickly bounces back.”

The argument is not whether or not this area is or is not a flood plain, but rather what has happened since the old intimately-managed system of sluices, dykes, levees and “canal-ised” rivers ceased to be tended in the traditional way.

“Years ago they did all this by hand,” says Hayley Matthews, who insists it is that management which has gone and that is why what people here are experiencing – again – what last year was described as a “one in one hundred year event”. Except the flooding is even worse this year than last.

She is busy. She has to move the ponies tomorrow to higher, drier ground. She has to pump out her sister-in-law’s 100 year old farmhouse which has never flooded. And she has to look out for her parents’ house across the yard, already surrounded by water and looking vulnerable to today’s incessant rain and tomorrow’s spring tides.

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