Experts: Dredging 'Not The Answer To Floods'
Updated: 12:22pm UK, Monday 10 February 2014
By Richard Williams, Sky News Online
Dredging is a "red herring" in the battle to combat flooding that has crippled parts of the country, experts have warned.
The Government has said it was wrong not to order dredging of the rivers in the Somerset Levels, where hundreds of home have been affected.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles apologised to flood-hit families for taking advice from the Environment Agency, saying: "We thought we were dealing with experts."
But the agency's head, Lord Smith, has defended his staff and accused others of "playing politics in the serious business of flood protection."
And Professor David Sear, an expert in rivers from the University of Southampton, said he believed Mr Pickles should resign over his comments.
"Dredging really is a red herring," he said.
"The problem is that you have people who think that because their grandfather used to dredge the river, that is the way to solve the problem. Well, wake up, the climate has changed and it's no longer so simple.
"A lot of money has been spent on doing flood assessments and research into how best to combat the problem. All of it points away from a dredging and towards a more sophisticated approach.
"If we limit ourselves to dredging, then the rivers in Somerset will have to be something like 100 metres wide and five metres deep, which means eating heavily into farm land and is obviously not going to be popular with farmers."
Dredging is an expensive process that involves using mechanical diggers or pumps to remove build-ups of silt from river beds, which helps increase the depth of the river and straighten channels.
However, there are strict restrictions on how dredging is carried out. The Environment Agency says it is not the most effective way of tackling floods, and that it has an unacceptable impact on the environment - making river banks less stable and disturbing wildlife habitats.
Another expert in flooding, Professor Stephen Rice from Loughborough University, said the focus on dredging was "short-termism".
"It is an incredibly complicated problem and it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, if there is enough water and nowhere for it to go, we will see flooding," he said.
"We've had record rainfall, we continue to allow development in flood plain areas and the fact that the focus is now on short-term solutions like dredging is really quite frustrating.
"The issue is how we manage the catchment and the landscape that drains into the rivers."
He also criticised the Communities Secretary's intervention, saying: "It's foolish on the part of Eric Pickles to suggest dredging is the answer while criticising the same experts who, rightly, have been saying the problem is much more complex than that.
"It's simply short-termism and political gamesmanship. We can get some guy to dredge out all the silt in the river, but the reality is that it's not going to help that much. We really need to respond to climate change scenarios.
"You can throw money at flood defences, but realistically we've got to do something about the bigger problem. Experience from around the world shows us that while engineering can help, it's not a solution in the long term."
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