UK floods and flood protection

It's called collapse

Thames flood defences among schemes hit by coalition funding cuts

Avoidable damage estimated to cost £3bn as projects at Heathrow, Dawlish and Somerset Levels delayed or downsized

the Guardian,

17 February, 2014

Planned defences along the length of the flood-hit Thames Valley were delayed and downsized after government funding cuts following the last election, the Guardian can reveal.

The schemes, totalling millions of pounds, include projects near Heathrow, near David Cameron's country home in Oxfordshire and in the constituency of the minister who oversaw annual flood budget cuts of almost £100m.

West Drayton, near Heathrow, the scene of significant flooding in west London, was in line for £2.8m of funding to build up concrete and earth bank defences by 2014-15. But following budget cuts, the Arklyn Kennels scheme was downgraded to a £1m scheme and delayed until at least 2018-19.

At Penton Hook, on the Thames near flood-affected Staines in Surrey, a £5.6m dredging scheme was due to be completed by the end of March 2014, but has received just £2m to date. The scheme was also intended to clean up a site where contaminated silt dredged from the river was dumped.

The government's official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, calculate that the hole in the government's flood defence funding will result in £3bn of otherwise avoidable damage, but the Guardian has been the first to reveal the specific schemes affected by budget cuts.

The missing schemes were identified by the Guardian by comparing the flood defence spending plans for 2010-11, the final year of the last government's budget and a high-water mark for flood defence spending, with the plans for subsequent years under the coalition.

Lord Krebs, of the CCC, told the Guardian that ministers had been clearly warned of the consequences of the cuts. "The bottom line is that the Environment Agency said loud and clear that if we are going to keep the risk of flooding at the current level, we need an extra £500m during the spending period from 2011 to 2015," he said.

"So are we spending enough on the defences at the moment? No, not if you want to keep the risk at the same level."

The wettest weather in England for at least two centuries has seen the Thames and its tributaries experience their highest flows in generations. River levels will remain high for weeks, fed by saturated aquifers.

Another scheme at Poyle, within a few hundred metres of Heathrow, was in line for £375,000 by 2013/14 but has received just 6% of this so far and has no current prospect of funding.

By Gatwick, a £13.4m scheme to build bigger dams and reservoirs on the Upper Mole river has been delayed by at least three years. The project would also have benefited 3,000 homes in the area.

Upstream from the Thames from London, further flood defence schemes have been affected. At Pangbourne in west Berkshire, a £222,000 scheme to prevent a repeat of burst river banks has received just £15,000 and the number of homes moved out of the higher flood risk categories has been cut from 123 to 23.

At Thatcham, also in Berkshire and in the constituency of Richard Benyon, floods minister from 2010-13, a £500,000 project was delayed by a year.

In Oxford, £1.5m of "short-term" flood protection work was meant to end in spring 2012, but less than £1m has been spent and the works are still incomplete. Further afield in the Thames Valley, and just 10 miles from Cameron's constituency home, a £1m scheme at Moreton-in-Marsh had an end date of spring 2013. The project, to protect 265 homes at "very significant or significant risk" of flooding has had only half the funding to date and no further money is expected.

On Monday, missing or delayed projects were revealed in the heart of the flood-stricken Somerset Levels and at Dawlish, where the main line railway to Cornwall was washed into the sea.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which provides the funding for flood defences, said: "We have spent £2.4bn on flood management and protection from coastal erosion over the past four years. We will continue to build defences where they are needed."

The Environment Agency chairman, Chris Smith, said: "The agency works within clear government guidelines on where to spend the funding it is given." The EA have identified 477 projects costing £2.25bn that would better protect 51,000 homes across England, but these have no prospect of funding before 2019-20.

Maria Eagle, Labour's shadow environment secretary, said: "Now that full details of the flood defence projects that had to be scrapped or delayed are known, it's clear just what a disastrous mistake David Cameron made when he took the short-term decision to axe £100m from flood protection budgets in 2010."

Friends of the Earth's Guy Shrubsole said: "These revelations are further proof that the government hasn't been taking the risks of climate change nearly seriously enough. David Cameron accepts that climate change is increasing flood risk – but he's made the false economy of cutting flood defences."

The government's own scientists have identified rising flood risk as the greatest impact of climate change on the UK, while the Environment Agency states that every £1 spent on flood defences saves £8 in avoided damages.

U.K.’s Historic Flooding Is Washing Sewage Into The Streets

Across the south of England, severe rain and flooding has lead to hundreds of reports of raw sewage oozing up in backyards and human waste washing into flooded homes, adding a potential health crisis to the storm-battered region.

Think Progress,

13 February, 2014

In Maidenhead, an affluent suburb of London, many residents have had sewage in their backyards for over two months.

“I accept flooding but it is the sewage that’s the problem. The smell comes up through the plug-hole in our kitchen. There’s bits of toilet paper in the garden,” June Dobbs told the Maidenhead Advertiser.

Many cities and towns in the U.K. rely largely on Victorian-era combined stormwater and sewage systems which have become completely overwhelmed by both the intensity and duration of the winter storms. When the systems can’t hold any more water, they spew raw sewage mixed with stormwater into streams and down main streets.

Last weekend, the Met Office’s chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo called the U.K.’s months of stormy weather the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years” and said that the extreme weather was “consistent with climate change.”

“All the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,” she said. “There is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”

The contaminated floodwater poses a serious health risk. It can be a nasty cocktail of E.coli, salmonella and campylobacter bacteria from animal waste and human sewage can add the norovirus to the mix.

Dr. Ben Neuman, a microbiologist from the University of Reading, who tested water samples around a flooded house in the Somerset Levels found much higher levels of bacteria than normal — about 70,000 bacteria per 100 milliliter. 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 500 bacteria per 100 milliliter of water is safe for bathing, and 1,000 per milliliter is acceptable for agricultural water.

Dr. Neuman likened the concentration of bacteria as equivalent to dissolving a couple of teaspoons of horse manure in an office water cooler.

“I think there will be a big spike in diarrhoea, but people may not end up reporting it to the public health authorities,” he told The Independent. “It will be unpleasant, but not deadly.”

James Winslade, a farmer who lives in the Sommerset Levels told a local reporter that 95 percent of his farm was underwater — between two to ten feet deep.

“Two sewage farms and all the septic tanks from the villages have flooded. We’ve got raw sewage and syringes and tampons, you name it, washing up against the house. We can’t let the children out anymore because of the smell and the contamination,” he said.

The brutal battering the southern coast of England has endured this winter has also exposed an old landfill site in Northam on the Devon Coast. Dating back to the 1940s the landfill was capped in 1995, but coastal erosion accelerated by recent wild weather has started to expose the trash, worrying residents that the garbage will soon fall into the estuary.

“It’s like a putrid pie with its crust cut off,” local district councilor David Brenton told the Plymouth Herald.

Residents who come into contact with floodwater are being advised to wash their hands regularly and to be especially careful if they have cuts or other skin abrasions.

Public Health England (PHE) is also monitoring reports from hospitals and family doctors for any indications of an outbreak of infectious disease and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been meeting with COBRA, the government’s national emergencies committee.