the flooding

[Bill HH]

Pity all this excess water can't be stored somehow.
When the next hosepipe ban is put into force we'll all be complaining.

There has never been a shortage of water, just a shortage of places to store it.

[Olorin2001]

My brother and sister in law, don't live on a flood plain, the lower floor of their house has been flooded and is a total write off, they have had to dig up the concrete floor in another of their lower rooms and bought and installed a pump, to try and get rid of some of the water, everything is ruined, this has never happened in the 20 years they have lived there.

So for those of us who have not been flooded, should think ourselves very lucky indeed.

They live in Berkshire.

I lived for many years with the river thames at the bottom of my garden, saw the river rise and fall, dealt with all the mess many times.
When I retired I moved to higher ground.

[Bill HH]

I have calculated that if i get flooded the whole of Torquay town centre will be under water with just the church spire sticking out. The water rushes down the road to the harbour and the drains cant take it, lower down it blows all the manhole covers off. As they as are under the torrent you cant see them, very dangerous. If somebody on foot went into one that would be it.

[ancee]

Pots that video was so funny, I was snorting with laughter! Ah humans, how frail and ridiculous we are!

[Potstubsdustbins]

Always said that when it comes to nature we humans think far to highly of ourselves.

When in reality we are more like ticks on a dogs back.

Potty

[Two_Sheds]

It is perhaps unfortunate that DC starts talking of giving grants to flood affected people just as the Thames floods whilst those in the Somerset levels had to wait weeks to get help.

that's the point I was making.

At no stage did I say that "wealthy people deserve to be flooded". It is a fact that urban areas receive more funding, and quicker, than rural areas, because of the 8-1 rule:

"(Defra) wanted to see an average of £8 of damage avoided for every £1 they would spend" [on flooding]

urban areas, being more densely-populated than the countryside, attract more funding (and politician attention).
Government raised bar for funding of flood defence schemes | Environment | The Guardian

[AllInContainers]

Some creative accountancy would help matters here, as often the "cost" involved aren't as clear cut as you might imagine. We'll take dreging as an example.

Dreging alone won't cure all the problems, but increasing the capacity of our waterways to remove water from the efectiuve areas has got to be a step in the right direction. I had many years dealing with British Waterways (as was, now Canal and River Trust), and have numerous conversations with them about dredging. The costs of the men and machines to remove the silt and increse waterway depth are managable - it's the disposal of the material that's the real problem. Although the rivers have been cleaned up in recent times, the river beds and silt still hold a great many toxins. Disturbing this will release the toxins into the water, but also mean that there are millions of tons of contaminated soil that needs somewhere else to go.

From an environmental perspective, wherever this ends up there will be fears of toxins getting into the water table and into the streams and rivers (where it originally came from), and the fees associated with "safe" disposal are phonomenal. The fees of course are issued by governement to reduce pollution to land fill etc ... so a large part of the funding problem is effectively of governments paying their own fees, fines and licenses. However, if they set aside land specifically for disposal of dredgings at no cost, the overall costs would be a tiny fraction of what they would be otherwise.

[bearded bloke]

As I said earlier in this thread ....

There are a great many forums for political debate,happily this is not one of them

With that in mind can we please stick with constructive posts with useful advice ...

the drains cant take it, lower down it blows all the manhole covers off. As they as are under the torrent you cant see them, very dangerous. If somebody on foot went into one that would be it.

... type of thing