David Cameron claims “The government is doing everything it can to help those who have seen their homes flooded – and to try and prevent further damage” (my italics). To quote a Guardian report of 28 October: “Projects at risk from the cuts include community solar and hydro projects in Cumbria, which will lead to the county losing at least £750,000 in investment.” Will the government now reverse the cuts it so foolishly made to subsidies and incentives for alternative energy?
Barbara Sanders
London
• Among the potential huge problems of the concentration of nuclear sites in Cumbria are the dangers of climate crisis and extreme weather. In your front-page account of the severe flooding in the county (Report, 7 December), nowhere is a link made to the nuclear sites. Perhaps if no comments are made by the nuclear industry then no problem exists?
Rae Street
Littleborough, Lancashire
• We were delighted to wake up this morning to light and heat after the power cut affecting the whole of Lancaster and beyond. That demonstrated how vulnerable our daily lives are to the loss of electricity through the flooding of one substation. Yet just think how much worse the effects of the floodsit would have been if fracking had started, with toxic chemicals being washed over farmland and into houses.
Dr Jo Guiver
University of Central Lancashire
• The catastrophically rapid rise in water levels after heavy rain in Cumbria is only “natural” (as several commentators have claimed) in a world with lots of sheep and no beavers. If beaver dams and woody debris slowed the flow of upland rivers, existing flood protection systems would be quite adequate. Given that climatic warming is guaranteed to increase our rain intensity, perhaps the reintroduction of European beavers should be accelerated, as a form of urban flood defence?
Peter Shaw
Dorking, Surrey
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