Building in flooded areas

Rinoa

GwylimT wrote: »

Dredging prevents the river taking its natural course, near Aberystwyth fields regularly flood after heavy rain. Some brain dead locals campaigned and the river was dredged, the result? Water could now flood a large village instead of fields, which it did a few weeks later, many of the campaigners lived in the village (Llanbadarn Fawr). Dredging floods someone/somewhere else, so instead of moaning about dredging being stopped how about putting that effort into informing people not to buy on flood plains.

There will always be examples where it hasn't been thought out wisely.

Maybe they should have dredged the river where it passes through the village. Although new EU laws do make make it complex and expensive.

Coincidence maybe, but there does appear to be far more flooding since the new EU laws came into effect in 2000.

Generali

Rinoa wrote: »

There will always be examples where it hasn't been thought out wisely.

Maybe they should have dredged the river where it passes through the village. Although new EU laws do make make it complex and expensive.

Coincidence maybe, but there does appear to be far more flooding since the new EU laws came into effect in 2000.

Maybe.

Let's face it, we're all arguing from a position of ignorance here. Maybe we can blame the EU for the fact that we aren't educated enough about this stuff given their culture of secrecy;).

System

I would think that one month's December rain in 24 hours (as happened in Cumbria) is going to overwhelm just about any flood defence system unless it involves walling in a river to a height of 20 feet above normal level. Rivers rose by 5+ metres

CLAPTON

Generali wrote: »

Maybe.

Let's face it, we're all arguing from a position of ignorance here. Maybe we can blame the EU for the fact that we aren't educated enough about this stuff given their culture of secrecy;).

indeed we need to know the science

however, there is the question of why ever do we need an EU directives on how to manage flooding in the UK : it's not as if we can accidentally damage an EU neighbour.

and we must not underestimate that the 'planners' will almost certainly automatically discard any solutions that conflicts with EU directives even if they consider them to be the best solution.

Bit like diesel : every scientific opinion knew that diesel is more damaging to health than petrol but that didn't stop the wrong solution being selected

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Rinoa wrote: »

Coincidence maybe, but there does appear to be far more flooding since the new EU laws came into effect in 2000.

To be fair, the EU dredging story has a grain of truth in it but like many of the anti-EU stories has been more than a little exaggerated.

EU regs motivated the shift in responsibility for dredging to the Environment Agency and a presumption that natural rivers were better in the long term than heavily engineered watercourses.

However there is nothing in EU law preventing the UK from dredging. We've started doing it again on a mass scale in some areas, ie, Somerset Levels, and that is not a breach of EU law.

As with many of these things (remember the bendy banana scare story) the EU cops a lot of the blame needlessly, and even though there is often a tiny grain of truth somewhere in the story, most of what reaches the media or blogosphere is highly exaggerated.

In my opinion the Environment Agency has got their priorities wrong and tend to err on the side of protecting newts and molluscs rather than people and houses.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

To be fair, the EU dredging story has a grain of truth in it but like many of the anti-EU stories has been more than a little exaggerated.

EU regs motivated the shift in responsibility for dredging to the Environment Agency and a presumption that natural rivers were better in the long term than heavily engineered watercourses.

However there is nothing in EU law preventing the UK from dredging. We've started doing it again on a mass scale in some areas, ie, Somerset Levels, and that is not a breach of EU law.

As with many of these things (remember the bendy banana scare story) the EU cops a lot of the blame needlessly, and even though there is often a tiny grain of truth somewhere in the story, most of what reaches the media or blogosphere is highly exaggerated.

In my opinion the Environment Agency has got their priorities wrong and tend to err on the side of protecting newts and molluscs rather than people and houses.

The bendy banana story is about throwing away good eatable food because is didn't meet the EU cosmetic standard.

Why you think it is funny to damage poor bananas growers income, waste perfectly food, increase CO2 and increase costs to the consumer, would normally be beyond me : however some EU supporters are like religious zealots and will not countenance any rational discussion and allow no deviate from true worship of the EU religion.
Glad to say the EU (after about 20 years ) repeeled the rules about throwing away perfectly nutritious food when the group think fashion changed.
Whilst it's true that the EU doesn't ban high mountain water meadows or tree plantation, it does pay subsidies to hill farmers who simply grass them over for sheep grazing.

kinger101

CLAPTON wrote: »

The bendy banana story is about throwing away good eatable food because is didn't meet the EU cosmetic standard.

Why you think it is funny to damage poor bananas growers income, waste perfectly food, increase CO2 and increase costs to the consumer, would normally be beyond me : however some EU supporters are like religious zealots and will not countenance any rational discussion and allow no deviate from true worship of the EU religion.
Glad to say the EU (after about 20 years ) repeeled the rules about throwing away perfectly nutritious food when the group think fashion changed.
Whilst it's true that the EU doesn't ban high mountain water meadows or tree plantation, it does pay subsidies to hill farmers who simply grass them over for sheep grazing.

There was never a ban of "bendy bananas". The law (now repealed) simply provided three classes of banana. The highest class required bananas that were "free from malformation or abnormal curvature". The other two classes could have "abnormal curvature". "Abnormal curvature" was never actually defined.

Yes, the law was entirely pointless, but there was never a ban on bendy bananas. However, much as the legislation surrounding food standards was scrapped as the EU did acknowledge this resulted in food waste. But I think here there is probably a deeper systemic problem of supermarkets not stocking goods with slight imperfections because customers won't buy them.

CLAPTON

kinger101 wrote: »

There was never a ban of "bendy bananas". The law (now repealed) simply provided three classes of banana. The highest class required bananas that were "free from malformation or abnormal curvature". The other two classes could have "abnormal curvature". "Abnormal curvature" was never actually defined.

Yes, the law was entirely pointless, but there was never a ban on bendy bananas. However, much as the legislation surrounding food standards was scrapped as the EU did acknowledge this resulted in food waste. But I think here there is probably a deeper systemic problem of supermarkets not stocking goods with slight imperfections because customers won't buy them.

The effect was as I described: lower income for poor farmers, wasted food, higher costs :

kinger101

CLAPTON wrote: »

The effect was as I described: lower income for poor farmers, wasted food, higher costs :

Can you tell me how many tons of bananas were wasted because of this law which didn't actually ban the sale of excessively curved bananas? None of the hundreds of press articles that have been produced seem to be able to provide that.

Interestingly, I did read that the banana is the item consumers discard the most. Seems a shame as banana bread is so tasty.

antrobus

I only know one thing; the floods in Cumbria and York etc will have a negligible impact on global banana supply.