Deviation Actions
Description
Here's an even better article on the flooding:
The shift in policy can be seen with brutal clarity on the Commission website which gives priority to the "environment", citing a raft of EU measures, including the Water Framework Directive, the Habitats Directive, the Environmental Impact Assessment and the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive. The Floods Directive is part of the package and this, we are sternly warned, has to be implemented by 2015.
Just so that there should be no doubts as to where the policy thrust lay, DG Environment in 2011 issued a note, stressing that flood risk management "should work with nature, rather than against it", building up the "green infrastructure" and thus offering a "triple-win" which included restoration (i.e., flooding) of the floodplain.
And Morley had already vetoed a proposal to build a new pumping station at Dunball Clyce, at the end of the massive Kings Sedgmoor drain. Pumping at this strategic outlet would have allowed much more effective, 24-hour discharge of floodwater into the mouth of the Parrett estuary.
The Moor had been drained since the 13th century, but the plan now was to flood Somerset back into the Middle Ages. To achieve this, the scheme included the purchase of a 200 hectares area of farmland by Natural England, used to create a winter habitat for birds when, as the Met Office was already predicting, climate change brought drier winters.
This was where November's forecast came in, because it led the Environment Agency deliberately to flood Southlake Moor in the expectation of a dry winter, keeping the water levels up, to "maintain the conservation interest". Using a special inlet built for the purpose, water was poured in from the River Sowy, instead of being discharged to sea.