The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
What is the better way of minimising flood damage?
Scrap subsidies for upland deforestation and allow rivers to meander - 58%
Keep the subsidies, straighten rivers and keep dredging them - 42%
The correct answer is obviously 'both' i.e. upstream we should stop subsidising deforestation and allow rivers to meander (and reintroduce beavers); and downstream we should do more dredging, remembering always that dredging and straightening just shift the problem elsewhere (see Jubilee River and Wraysbury). In other words, if you increase the flow capacity of a river at any point (by dredging, widening or straightening), then you have to make sure that the flow capacity everywhere further downstream is at least as great.
But faced with the deliberately stark choice (basically George Monbiot vs agricultural landowners), the first option is the better one.
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This week's Fun Online Poll.
How will you respond to the new drinking guidelines?
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Monday, 4 January 2016
Fun Online Polls: Floods & Dry January
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4 comments:
I'm all for reintroducing beavers, phnaaar, phnaar
"But faced with the deliberately stark choice (basically George Monbiot vs agricultural landowners), the first option is the better one."
I think you're wrong, at least in Cumbria. The hills in Cumbria have been deforested for a long time, the rivers have been undredged for a short time. When the rivers were dredged there were few floods. Therefore we should go back to dredging.
It might be a good idea to start planting trees on the hills but it's going to take a long time for them to get established and to see whether or not it works. In the meantime, go back to doing what works.
M, you're married and I've seen your garden. The trees are all chewed away and the stream is dammed up. So there's enough beaver in your life.
F, a good point, well made. Dredging is a better short term solution but not necessarily the best or only long term one.
F and MW. Also there was a lot of upland management as well that has been abandoned for whatever reason. I was reading how around Pickering Monks had built surge ponds on the moors to regulate the flow to the down stream watercourses and that these had been abandoned/neglected whatever.
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