{"id":2107,"date":"2014-01-29T09:02:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T09:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/?p=2107"},"modified":"2014-01-29T09:02:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T09:02:22","slug":"somerset-ea-spend-31million-flooding-farmland-for-bird-sanctuary-jan-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/somerset-ea-spend-31million-flooding-farmland-for-bird-sanctuary-jan-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Somerset EA Spend \u00a331million Flooding Farmland For Bird Sanctuary – Jan 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

EA says it can not afford \u00a34million to dredge Somerset Rivers but has spent \u00a331million in Somerset knocking down sea walls (managed realignment<\/em>) to flood farmland in order to create intertidal habitat for birds.<\/p>\n

29 January 2014 Daily Mail has 3 stories about flooding in Somerset.<\/p>\n

It’s the deluded greens who’ve left my Somerset neighbours 10ft under water<\/span><\/a> by Christopher Booker caught my eye.\u00a0 Particularly this<\/p>\n

…the agency\u2019s argument was not simply that to carry on dredging was too expensive. After a Labour peer, Baroness (Barbara) Young of Old Scone was put in to run it in 2000, she and her officials decided on a new priority.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead of managing the Levels as farmland, large parts of them should be allowed to return to being a swampy wilderness as nature reserves for birds and other wildlife.<\/em><\/p>\n

As Baroness Young famously once observed: \u2018I\u2019d like to see a limpet mine put on every pumping station. <\/em><\/p>\n

What was astonishing about this was that such a fundamental change of policy, affecting the homes and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, was never openly declared or consulted on.<\/em><\/p>\n

The \u2018environmentalists\u2019 of the agency and their \u2018green\u2019 allies, such as the quango Natural England and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, have tried to smuggle in this new strategy by the back door. But this winter, after the Levels have been disastrously inundated again, they have at last been horribly caught out.<\/em><\/p>\n

One huge irony, as those who know the Levels intimately observe, is that among the victims of all this abnormal flooding are not just the human population, but nature itself.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It has inflicted immense damage on ground-nesting birds, wild flowers, badgers (many of which have drowned in recent days) and even fish, which can no longer survive in undredged rivers choked by millions of tons of sludge.<\/em><\/p>\n

Few things have made the locals angrier than the way the Environment Agency says it cannot afford the \u00a34\u2009million it would need to dredge the rivers, while on the Somerset coast a few miles away it is happy to see \u00a331\u2009million spent on dismantling flood defences, so the sea can turn hundreds of acres of prime farmland into a bird sanctuary.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Christopher Brooker also points out<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

Tellingly, another area of Britain reclaimed from swampland \u2014 the Norfolk Broads \u2014has remained dry this winter.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is because, 20 years ago, the local Broads authorities fought a bitter but successful battle to prevent responsibility for their drainage being given to the Environment Agency.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So in order to save money and follow an environmental agenda EA spends far more<\/p>\n

And as an added bonus, by neglect,\u00a0 causes far more damage to property farms and nature.<\/p>\n

Yippee<\/p>\n

The other two articles are here<\/a> and here<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EA says it can not afford \u00a34million to dredge Somerset Rivers but has spent \u00a331million in Somerset knocking down sea walls (managed realignment) to flood farmland in order to create intertidal habitat for birds. 29 January 2014 Daily Mail has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[273,91,66,104,205,204,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2110,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions\/2110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}