In response to George Monbiot (Our government’s big green idea: let’s subsidise natural disasters, 25 February): the Environment Agency is already using natural processes to tackle floods at source and reduce flood risk to communities. These range from increasing woodland areas, which intercept rain and absorb ground water, to using ponds to store excess water. Coastal schemes, such as the award-winning Medmerry managed realignment scheme, which works with natural tides to provide wetland habitat, are also a key way of working to reduce flood risk at source.
We are currently piloting a number of land management schemes to slow the flow of water before it reaches rivers and reduce the risk of flooding in such areas as Belford in Northumberland and Pickering in Yorkshire. These schemes can be extremely effective, particularly when developed alongside more traditional forms of flood risk management and we will continue to use them where we can. There is an interconnection between the ways land is used and water is managed and we always seek to work in partnership with farmers and local authorities to support the right approaches.
Pete Fox
Director, Flood Risk Strategy and Investment, Environment Agency
• Groundwater was the cause of the landslip at Harbury, Warwickshire, not (as George Monbiot claims) vegetation clearance. Harbury cutting sits on a mudstone bed which weathers to a high plasticity clay. There was a landslip in 2007 which not only removed the top 750mm of the slope face, but also all the trees along with it. Tackling the groundwater has been the main priority for the geotechnical experts and engineers.
The failure plane (where movement occurred) at the landslip on Saturday 31 January was extremely deep, at a far greater depth than any root system could penetrate. Even if trees were still on the cutting at the time, they’d have been swept away along with the soil as happened in 2007. We’ve been moving heaven and earth to reopen the railway. We’ve so far removed 100,000 tonnes out of the estimated 350,000 tonnes of material from the site and are on track to have it open by Easter.
James Dean
Network Rail
• George Monbiot makes the very good point that reforesting of upper catchment areas could significantly reduce the risk of flooding further downstream. But it may not be quite as simple as that. I remember reading a few years ago, during a severe drought, that a water company was seeking to clear forests in central Wales in order to give better flows further downstream where there was insufficient water for abstraction.
Roger Hand
Taunton, Somerset
• George Monbiot is not quite correct in saying that farmers can clear land of scrub and deep vegetation, “trashing wildlife and exacerbating floods downstream” so that “farm subsidies” can be claimed on areas of “ineligible features”. The Environmental Impact Assessment (Agriculture) (England) (No 2) Regulations 2006 protect such areas, and a screening application must be submitted before any of the following are undertaken on “uncultivated land and semi-natural areas”: increased use of fertiliser or soil improvers; sowing seed; ploughing, tine harrowing or rotovating the land; draining land; clearing existing vegetation, either physically or using herbicides.
Prosecution may result in a fine of up to £5,000 and the possibility of an order to return land to its former state. Payment of the common agricultural policy single payment may also be affected: it is only made if environmental protection rules are followed.
John Davis
Aberystwyth
• Back in the 1970s, the secondary school where I taught in Hackney used to timetable small groups of pupils in a cottage in central Wales for a week’s field studies. Each year we included a visit for the geography and geology groups to the Clywedog dam, where the manager would ask them what purpose they thought the dam served. Then we would drive up to the summit of the Hafren forest, and look out on woodland as far as the eye could see.
No student ever guessed the purpose of the dam and the forests was not for drinking water and timber, but to control the level of water along the length of the rivers Severn and Wye by holding back rain water. It was a satisfying moment of education to see their realisation. That was 40 years ago.
Simon Clements
Sheffield
• Apropos manmade disasters that keep coming back: there may be an Indian analogue but the pitchfork quote I know is from Horace: Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret (“You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she’ll keep coming back”).
Jinty Nelson
London
