The environment agency - Fit for purpose?

[Grumpmeister]

Living in Cornwall where floods have become a common occurrence I've been keening an eye on the news and heard about this whistleblower site earlier on. It's been an interesting counterpoint to the head of the Environment Agency's statement that people who buy property on flood plains only have themselves to blame.

http://insidetheenvironmentagency.co.uk

I'm hoping that what is on here is mistaken but given the state of things at the moment and the fact we have an incompetent PC government that has its head so far up its arse it could lick its tonsils clean I find this all to easy to believe. This came from John Redwoods blog:

"The Environment Agency is an enormous quango, with an enormous budget. It employs 11,177 staff directly, and another 1,075 on temporary contracts. In 2012-13, its running costs were £1.2bn. Its capital works budget for that year was £219m, of which less than a tenth –£20.3m – went on improving channels for the free flow of water."

"The staff costs of the Agency rose by £30m or 8% compared to the previous year, reaching a total of £395.3 million. The Agency employed 12,252 people including temps and contractor personnel. Pension contributions cost £56 m , with a loss on the fund recognised that year in the accounts bringing the total pension cost to £197.4 million. The total cost of pensions was almost as high as the capital works, where they spent £219million during the year."

"They should have asked where all the £1200 million spent last year went. Why was only £20 m spent on maintaining ditches and culverts? Why so little on dredging? Why have dredging machines been sold off for scrap or allowed to rust without use in some places? Why did the INCREASE in the staff budget, £30m, exceed the total spend on essential maintenance?"

The full post is here

http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2014/02/04/what-the-today-programme-should-have-asked-the-environment-agency/

This is a quick summary of major floods over the last few years

Easter 1998 - One months rain falls in the midlands in 24 hours. £400 million damage and 5 deaths.

Autumn 2000 - 10000 properties flooded with an estimated cost of £1 billion

Summer 2007 - Floods across the UK leave 13 people dead, over 44000 homes flooded and causes over £3 billion of damage. An NAO report on the performance of the EA highlights that they have failed to reach their target for maintaining flood defence systems. This is strenuously denied by the then chief executive. It is revealed just before the floods that the directors awarded themselves 5 figure 'performance bonuses'. The timing of the release is to say the least suspicious as it is just as MP's left for their 11-week summer recess. Pretty much guaranteeing little or no parliamentary scrutiny.

Damage estimates of the flooding at the moment range from £500 million to £1 billion with an estimated £3 billion extra in the longer term.

Why the hell wasn't more done to maintain or improve existing flood defences when its obvious that this is a problem that is increasing in severity. If Redwood's figures are correct then less than a quarter of ONE PERCENT of the agency's budget was spent on essential maintenance.



As for the backlash about the current floods and the stopping of dredging the main waterways of the somerset broads from 2000 onwards courtesy of Baroness Young and her 'just add water' (she actually said this in an interview) attitude to reclaiming the flood plains its clear that senior management needs to have a clue as to what they are meant to be doing. As most of the dredging equipment has been sold off or left to rust the majority of the work now has to be contracted out, Now according to the EA it would cost somewhere between £1.4 and £4.1 million to dredge 4 km of the Parrett and 1 km of the Tone. Something strikes me as being off about the quoted cost given that a couple of years ago there was a proposal made to dredge the river Fal all the way up to Truro, a much larger stretch of waterway, for a fraction of what they have quoted here. Hell one company offered to do it for free as long as they could have the rights to the dredged material. 

Either scrap and replace the EA with something that has people capable of running the thing properly or split off responsibility for flood prevention and defence to a dedicated body.

[apc2010]

 

[Barman]

Excellent post Grumpy.... 

Clearly the EA is not fit for purpose...

The depressing thing is that there are hundreds of other quangos that are probably equally as bad sucking from the taxpayer's teat....

[Darwins Selection]

Whilst I have little time for the EA, which is just another bloated bureaucracy that has handled this all very badly, I think a bit of history about the Somerset Levels is worth considering.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels covers it all pretty well.

The key point is that the area has been known to flood since prehistoric times. The name of the place means that it was only useable in Summer for grazing, and for the rest of the year was a huge salt marsh off the Bristol channel.

The fact that it dried up a bit in the last 1000 years or so and people moved in to live full time, doesn't alter the basic topography of the place.

Lack of dredging is a bit of an easy target. Under conditions of rainfall such as we have had recently, fully dredged rivers would have delayed the start of flooding by a few days but once you have enough water to raise the water table to river/sea level, it makes no difference how deep the waterways are, the water will not just drain away.

All the hand wringing from EA and government, stood against the media frenzy for culprits, will do nothing to change the dynamics of the area or erase the well established history.

Without the full Dutch treatment, it will go on happening until the end of time unless that end of the country is raised up and/or the sea level drops by 10 metres or so.

[The Moan Ranger]

Wot DS said ^^^. Stop looking for someone to blame other than the Vatican.  This is an act of "god" and therefore their extremely rich representatives on earth could foot the bill. ..

[Grumpmeister]

The comment I made about the dredging was more about their quoted cost than anything else. My main argument has been that while the floods themselves can be classed as an act of 'god' the fact that we have seen repeated flooding over the last fifteen or so years that has increased in severity would surely have made it common sense to allocate more resources into flood prevention and protection infrastructure than have been so far.

I'm not allocating blame here but the simple fact is that like so much of the government people are put in charge who do not have the required knowledge or experience.

 

[Nick]

They have spent millions round here on a largely unnecessary and utterly hideous concrete flood barrier through a local nature reserve. They reckon the risk of flood is once a century 

[Barman]

They have spent millions round here on a largely unnecessary and utterly hideous concrete flood barrier through a local nature reserve. They reckon the risk of flood is once a century 

Or more frequently in the presence of Nick-o-Rays^TM. 

[Nick]

 

I was present for the last flood tis true................................twas in 1964.

[Steve]

Well said DS and TMR ^

The EA were being asked to fork out ~£2M a year to protect something like 40 properties in Somerset for a supposed "once in 100 year event" unless of course there was that climate change going on.  Well I don't know why we now have a once in 250 year event and I suspect no one really does but it'd still be cheaper to just buy out those properties.

God knows what the EA were supposed to do in the Thames Valley, seems people at risk were warned in writing 2 weeks ago and yet the local councils seem to have done eff all even when the water was lapping at people's doors.   Here's a clue councils:  call the MoD that's waiting for a call and tell them "help us now".  Instead some poor woman has to indirectly do it for them by being interviewed on Sky.  FFS!

So here's some praise for the EA as imho this has been a stonking good website for checking which rellies are at risk:

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/142151.aspx

(PS it is now getting overloaded at times)

[Nick]

That twat Roger Harrabin is creaming himself over the "climate change" implications of all this. 

[Darwins Selection]

That twat Roger Harrabin is creaming himself over the "climate change" implications of all this. 

The Somerset floods were much worse than they are now just after Stonehenge was built.
 
Presumably the Druids were responsible for the climate change that time?