sturkwurk on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/sturkwurk/art/Keep-Calm-and-glub-glub-glub-436049096sturkwurk

Deviation Actions

sturkwurk's avatar

Keep Calm and glub glub glub

By
Published:
1.7K Views

Description

Hang in there UK!

Should I take this down? I don't want to be disrespectful to the people that have lost loved ones during the flooding, I just want to draw more attention to it, it's barely being covered by the U.S. media.
Image size
900x1000px 88.25 KB
© 2014 - 2024 sturkwurk
Comments7
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Kajm's avatar

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.

Meanwhile the Environment Agency had long since stopped properly dredging the River Parrett, which provided the main channel draining floodwater to the sea, because of the exorbitant cost of disposing of silt under EU Waste Framework Directive, and the complicated procedures required by the Habitats Directive.

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.

Instead, an £8 million scheme to "restore" – i.e. increase flooding - on the Moors was implemented. The first part was the "restoration" of Southlake Moor next to Burrowbridge on the Parrett, first flooded in the winter 2009/10, thus fulfilling the requirements of the Habitat Directive. It had been made possible with the money Elliot Morley had provided back in 2005. 

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.

 

www.eureferendum.com/blogview.…