Topic: Revealed: how green ideology turned a deluge into a flood

[oldcoastie6468]

Revealed: how green ideology turned a deluge into a flood
Somerset saw the floods coming. The Environment Agency should have, too.
15 February 2014

It has taken six long weeks to uncover the real hidden reasons why, from the West Country to the Thames Valley, the flooding caused by the wettest January on record has led to such an immense national disaster. Only now have the two ‘smoking guns’ finally come to light which show just how and why all this chaos and misery has resulted directly from a massive system failure in the curious way our country is governed.

Because I live in Somerset, I first became aware that something very disturbing was going on back around the new year. As it became clear that the flood waters on the Somerset Levels were beginning to rise dangerously high for the third year running, I set out to find technical experts who could explain just what had gone wrong.

I discovered what I was looking for in the members of a small task force set up by the Royal Bath and West agricultural society, which from the mid-18th century had organised the effective draining of the Levels, after they were first reclaimed from a marshy wilderness by Dutch engineers in the reign of Charles I. These farmers, with long practical experience of working with the local drainage boards, along with an eminent engineer who chairs the Wessex flood defence committee, were in no doubt as to why in recent years the Levels have become subject to abnormally prolonged and destructive flooding.

{SNIP}

In Somerset alone, quite apart from the Thames Valley, the eventual cost of this disaster is already estimated at well over£100 million. If this cost also includes the drowning of countless ground-nesting birds, hedgehogs, water voles and badgers which the policies of Brussels and Baroness Young have made inevitable, then, even on their own terms, the case for root-and-branch reversal of such a crazily self-deluding policy becomes overwhelming.

But how to disentangle ourselves from this mess, when we are committed by law to obey those EU rules, is another problem altogether.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9137131/instant-wildlife-just-add-water/

[Weisshaupt]

Michelle just went to a meeting on the Colorado Flooding where it was reveled.. the flooding was worse because waterways engineered to have 10 feet of clearance between bridges and riverbeds in fact had 4. One local farmer (also an engineer and who was involved in the original planning for the bridge)  had called the State on it many times - even once during a drought year when no water was in the channel.  The perfect time to work on it one might think.

He was informed it was habitat for some field mouse or other and that CDOT couldn't touch it.  This is why I don't go to these meetings - because  I would shout out something to the effect  of

"Its a good thing the govt is here to protect us! Or is it the field mince, I forget."

or

"When the Democrats give the Field Mice votes?"

or

"Is it bad for the field mice habitat when it floods? If you won't protect us, dredge out the river to save the poor  field mice!

And yes, it did destroy their habitat and they are all up form the river and getting into people's homes. Its probably a matter if time before the EPA tells people to get out of their houses because those houses are protected mouse habitat...

[Libertas]

Both mice and human facilitators should be...purged.

[oldcoastie6468]

Just damned rodents. Vermin.

I'm talking about the mice.

The facilitators have their own descriptions.

[richb]

The government is simply incompetent at just about anything it touches.   Adding green mandates only makes it worse.

I live in an area where the feds have been working on a flood control project.   This project was supposed to be completed,  get this,  in 1986.    YES, 1986! 

Its still not completed today in 2014.    Only in the last two years have people finally being removed from the floodplain.   They even bungled when homeowners could begin to drop insurance,  that confusing the hell out of homeowners,  many who kept insurance because it was hard to figure out if it was done or not.     

Homeowners were supposed to be done with flood insurance (required by most mortgages) over 30 years ago.   Untold millions have been spent on flood insurance that was supposed to go away 3 decades ago.   

Oh,  by the way,  one bridge in my town still hasn't been raised.   It was rebuilt about 5 years ago,  but it wasn't raised, though many people pointed out that it needs to be raised.    So it has to be sandbagged when there is heavy rain,  blocking a major street in the process.    The town still doesn't know if it will even be raised at all.    But it leaves a hole in the wall.

[Libertas]

Local officials need to feel the heat for not being on the side of people and their property, if they are not for us they are against us, time to force things!