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I was gratified to receive comments to my post on my telegraph blog that were largely in agreement with my thoughts. Especially it was good to get a comment from Rachel who confirmed that in her own experience the drains were inadequate to the task.
I posted another message in the same vein as follows
Charles Clover makes a similar point to my earlier post about the problem of drainage and how new estates are more than likely to be built on flood plains. It is of course more dificult to use simple drainage schemes to protect property on a flood plain, but not impossible. The trick is to identify possible escape routes for the water and then not block them as well. Defensive barriers in the long run will prove ineffective and prohibitively expensive.
Unfortunately, so far there is no evidence that public bodies are taking any notice of these solutions, either through planning regulations or the application of ordinary common sense.
I posted this in my.telegraph blog.
I have just been viewing a report on BBC 24 about the forthcoming review of the civic response to the recents floods in Yorkshire. In it the reporter repeated that the floods were unpredictable and extraordinary. The changing patterns of weather in this country make this trite remark sound very complacent. He also mentioned the flood defences or lack of them.
We would not need flood defences if we stopped building on flood plains, stopped paving and tarmacing every available surface, planted more trees and stopped clearing mature trees and finally where there are existing towns at risk they were protected by adequate flood drains under roads and pavements. Forty years ago when I lived in Johannesburg, SA, there were regular storms when an inch or more of rain fell in a an hour or so. The huge drains allowed the water to run off roadways almost as fast as it fell and there was never any risk of flooding to properties of any sort. We have to accept that the recent heavy rain is likely to be repeated on more or less regularly in the future and that building defensive wall to prevent floods will be a waste of time and money.
