Oral evidence: Winter Floods, HC 991Wednesday 26 February 2014

Oral evidence, 26 February 2014.

Witness

Martin Whiting, Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, gave evidence.

Chair

Mr Whiting, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Could I ask you, for the record, to give your title and description?

Martin Whiting

I am Martin Whiting, representing the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. I am a past chairman of the national Rivers & Coastal Group. I am a chartered civil engineer by profession.

Chair

Was the study, Floods and Dredging—a reality check, funded by CIWEM?

Martin Whiting

Indeed, in part. You will see acknowledgements on the back page of the other partner organisations that participated in both the funding and the production of the document.

Chair

I think you conclude that, particularly in relation to the Parrett and the Tone, dredging could have made a difference in the duration of the flooding this year, with the winter floods.

Martin Whiting

It was based on the modelling that took place after the 2012 flooding that indicated, for a different rainfall event, and for a different tidal event, there was a benefit that could have been achieved through dredging. It is probable, but it is still subject to study, that the duration of the flooding may well have been reduced.

Chair

Do you think that dredging is appropriate? In which conditions is it appropriate to dredge main rivers?

Martin Whiting

Dredging, as with all other manmade impacts on natural water systems, has to be considered in totality of the river catchment where it is being proposed. In some instances, dredging on a manmade channel will have a beneficial effect, but it has to be appreciated that dredging was first introduced because it was a navigation aid when vessels were coming up the river systems. It was then continued as a land‑drainage function to enable farming land to be best utilised. Only in recent terms and recent times has it been considered to have an impact on flood‑risk management. One of the diagrams included within our report comes as an indication of a study that was undertaken to model the effects, so that we had an evidence base on which to determine the impact. It illustrates that, while material, silt, debris in the bottom of the river channel does reduce the depth of water in the river channel, and therefore, when there is heavy rainfall, the water will come out of the channel at an earlier stage, once the water is out of the channel, the floodplain width reduces the impact and depth of water across the floodplain by only a very marginal effect. That is where the analysis that is necessary both for a particular catchment and then for sites within that catchment needs to determine the actual value of undertaking dredging work.

Chair

You probably will have heard that, in this particular case, the local drainage board felt that silt from the sea partly contributes to the silting of the Somerset Levels rivers Parrett and Tone. What impact can dredging of these channels have on coastal areas when there is a risk of tidal flooding and tidal surges?

Martin Whiting

Very minimal. Any dredging would remove a bar across the river width near its outlet to the sea. That bar would have collected material that was dropping out as the silt came down. The type of material that the sea would bring in would be larger‑grained sizes, rather than the sediment of the earth particles that had been brought down the river channel. The sea interface would actually push some seaborne material in, but the bigger impact, often, is the way in which it slows down the sediment that is coming down the river, because the incoming tide slows down the passage of the water. As the water slows down, the sediment drops out, and there is an apparent increase in sediment after the high tide. The high tide has not brought the material in; it has brought very little material in, but because it has slowed down the flow coming down the river, the sediment has dropped out there. Therefore, when the tide goes out, it is visible that there is more sediment. In some instances, there is an incorrect assumption that the sea has brought that sediment in, but all it has done, by the force of the water against the downriver flow, is cause that sediment to drop out.

Chair

In this report, did you look at all water channels, not just rivers? We just heard that there is as great a length of artificial channels as rivers. Did, in your study, you look at the impact on flooding of artificial manmade channels?

Martin Whiting

Both manmade and natural river channels were considered. The conclusions that we have come to we believe are appropriate for both types of channel.

Chair

That is very helpful, thank you.

Neil Parish

This is to do with using the silt as a fertiliser. There is an argument that sometimes it is treated as a waste and then it has to be hauled away. From your point of view, do you feel we should, as landowners, be permitted to spread it on the fields? Do you see a problem with this?

Martin Whiting

It is standard good practice for all dredging works to have the first sample of material that is excavated from the river tested. Subject to the test results demonstrating that there is no pollutant material within that silt, spreading it on the land is a great idea. The temptation in some instances, however, has been to transport the dredged material the shortest distance possible. In some instances, it has been a case of an excavator working along a riverbank, excavating it from the river channel, swinging round to 180 degrees and depositing it. What you then create is a secondary bank of flood defence. That practice is not going to be beneficial, because you are going to totally interrupt the use of the natural floodplain. At the end of the day, the natural floodplain is there to do a particular job. The question on flood‑risk management is how best you balance those two requirements.

Neil Parish

Therefore, what you are saying is that if it is dredged out and the silt is used as a fertiliser, it is spread across the land, not left in the form of a bank. I can see the argument for that. Also, surely, if you dig it out and leave it too much on the side of the bank, there is that danger it will go back into the river.

Martin Whiting

Yes, indeed, of course. The next flood event just puts it all back in the river. One of the challenges is that dredging is not in itself a sustainable solution. Why has the sediment dropped out where it has dropped out? There is some sort of change in the river channel cross-section; the flows are slowing down; the sediment is dropping out. It will continue to do that, and the fact that you take it out one year does not prevent it from coming back. As Mr Bradford was demonstrating, it is an ongoing commitment, so, to some extent, it is a less sustainable solution as a maintenance activity, although I totally accept the sustainability of the agricultural interest.

Mrs Glindon

How can wildlife and ecosystems be protected during dredging activities?

Martin Whiting

The ecosystems are going to be changed. As soon as you start doing some sort of manmade intervention, you are going to change the ecosystem. In some instances, if there has been a significant build‑up of debris and silt and there is a lack of oxygen in the water, then by removing the debris and the silt, you may bring back more oxygen back into the river. That could be a beneficial impact on the ecosystem, but in general, as soon as you start doing some work, you are changing that ecosystem. The challenge then is how to mitigate those changes. In some instances, it might be working only on one side of a river channel at a time. It might be working in sections, alternately, across the channel, so the first 50 metres is done from the left bank; the second 50 metres is done from the right bank, and alternating it along the river channel, to limit the amount of change that will occur because of that action.

Mrs Glindon

The report goes on to say that sensitive dredging can have positive impacts on biodiversity. How can it happen that environment and biodiversity are enhanced by dredging?

Martin Whiting

In some instances. The particular instance is where you are enabling more oxygen to get into the system, and therefore different plant-life, different invertebrates can then have a positive habitat. It may be that previous clean gravel beds, which are of particular value to spawning fish, have been covered by silt, and by removing the silt and restoring that clean gravel bed, you then do improve the habitat and the ecosystem in that particular location. But, again, the assessment has to be carried out on a site‑by‑site basis, determining what the material is that we are taking out, what it is that we are uncovering, and a complete environmental impact assessment of just what the works are going to lead to.

Jim Fitzpatrick

Mr Whiting, you may have heard me asking our previous witnesses about the responsibility for maintenance and dredging allocated to the Environment Agency, local authorities and IDBs. I think I am accurate in saying that they were not really that worried about that; they were more worried about the amount of resource allocated to the task. Do you share that view, or do you have a different view?

Martin Whiting

In general, I do share that view. Madam Chairman referred earlier to the enmainment of watercourses that took place. That was, to a large extent, where local authorities were seen not to be giving the priority to a watercourse for flood‑defence purposes that was really warranted, so the role local authorities now play, not in their lead local flood authority role but as operating authorities, has been amended. I think that is appropriate. Internal drainage boards have the direct objective of increasing the agricultural benefit of the land to the landowners whom they are serving. Therefore, their activities are not necessarily directly aligned with the Environment Agency, who are the flood‑risk management authority for main river. There is a slightly different purpose, and, therefore, to change the responsibility for the activities would not help to clarify or assist in this particular situation.

Jim Fitzpatrick

Notwithstanding the different responsibilities, the relationship is a workable one.

Martin Whiting

I do believe so. Reference was made to the fact that some internal drainage boards are used by the Environment Agency to carry out works on behalf of the Environment Agency. I believe that, within local areas, there is a sound working relationship, and it benefits both parties.

Jim Fitzpatrick

I also asked about the seven landowner watercourse maintenance pilots. Mr Cator was very emphatic that they were very much in the right direction. The Chair asked, if it is so emphatic, whether they should be advanced and the process to roll this out accelerated. Do you have a view on this?

Martin Whiting

I do have a view. At the moment, they have a sound basis to take them forward. It was because they had a sound basis that they were introduced as pilots. There is not evidence, at the moment, to demonstrate that the sound basis is delivering benefit. In theory, it is there. There have been examples where it has reduced the time that it takes for individual landowners to get approval to carry out works. It is important that a catchment-wide consideration of flood‑risk management is taken into account. It is a bit analogous to somebody saying, “Well, we want better control of the traffic lights outside of Parliament Square,” with just the traffic lights at Parliament Square being under control, with no reference to the rest of the traffic and what happens there. Individual landowners taking responsibility for flood‑alleviation work along their property boundary is grand. However, it must be seen on a catchment‑wide basis, because otherwise there is the potential for unintended consequences.

Jim Fitzpatrick

So you do not think that is able to be demonstrated until and unless the pilots run their full course to allow that examination to take place.

Martin Whiting

I believe the programme is designed to enable that analysis to happen, and I would be supportive of them running their full course before having wider implementation.

Chair

Presumably, we are trying to prevent flooding.

Martin Whiting

We are trying to limit the flooding. We will never stop the flooding, and I think it is important that we recognise that there will always be a risk of flooding. The money that is put in by the Environment Agency—

Chair

Suppose I see in my area that there are self‑planting willow trees growing very rapidly, that debris is being brought down from the hills, that surface water is feeding into a river, that the river is also silting up, which is preventing the water from flowing away, so in times of flood it spills onto the land or it goes into towns like Pickering and Thirsk. In my personal view, if we are trying to prevent flooding, I would say we should allow dredging to go ahead. I am slightly surprised by your answer to Mr Fitzpatrick’s question that you cannot show there is evidence under these pilot schemes that a benefit has been delivered. The benefit is surely that there is no flooding. It is difficult to prove benefit if there has been no flooding.

Martin Whiting

Defra have supported a limited number of pilots. To use one or two case studies to say, “The pilots are successful; let’s roll this out nationally,” is not—

Chair

At the moment, the landowner is prevented from removing these willow trees and removing the debris from his land. Surely, if there are no disbenefits proved after six months, we should crack on with it, for the reasons Mr Bradford gave: that we are going to have an even bigger flood; it could be in my area next time; it could be in your area. We had it last year, and we are sick of it, so why can’t we get on with the dredging?

Martin Whiting

Because, as you rightly said, Madam Chairman, after six months, all of the pilots can be reviewed, their effectiveness can be analysed and the good learning points can be distilled from the learning points that say, “Look, this just has not worked as we wanted it to. Why has it not worked in those places? Is it because of inertia of one party or another?”

Chair

But you have no evidence that they have not worked.

Martin Whiting

That is correct.

Chair

So why not let them go ahead in other parts of the country?

Martin Whiting

Because we have a limited number of pilots that were designed to run over a duration of implementation, and we want some evidence to say, “This is a really good idea. Let’s do this across England.”

Chair

There is no evidence that it is not a good idea. You have just said that.

Jim Fitzpatrick

Do you think the evidence over time might change?

Martin Whiting

I am sure it will. We will have evidence over time, and that is all that the pilots were designed to collect.

Neil Parish

To come back to the combinations, can dredging be used in a combination with more natural flood‑defence techniques, such as planting woodland upstream and establishing flood storage areas, or are the approaches mutually exclusive?

Martin Whiting

As I said, we need to ensure that there is a catchment‑wide approach to this and we understand that the actions in one location do not have a negative impact either upstream or downstream. If dredging is undertaken, and if we refer back to the Somerset Levels, do we fully understand what might be the implications downstream and on the towns there? It is one thing to respond to natural events and to manage them in the best way we can, but if we start undertaking actions that are going contrary to those natural events and we make things worse, what would be the public response to that? It is getting the balance, but there is no reason to say, “Look, we are using dredging here; therefore we cannot use any other methods of mitigating and reducing the flood risk.” They can be complementary.

Neil Parish

Would you also accept that, in Somerset, one of the problems is that it is not about the flooding per se; it is about the length of time of flooding? We are now talking about nearly two months; we are talking about a huge depth of water, greater than probably we have seen for many years. Are you not concerned by that? You have almost been saying that you are not really sure whether dredging does any good or whatever. This has been the acquired wisdom for too long now, if I may be too bold, and we do need to relook at it, because you cannot expect villages and even farmland to be flooded for two months. You do not only destroy the farmland; you destroy much of the nature conservation that you want to keep there.

Martin Whiting

Indeed, I do understand that, and Mr Bradford’s point did emphasise that. Sorry, having followed it, I have lost the question.

Neil Parish

The question is the length of time, two months, and the depth of water has to be a concern.

Martin Whiting

Whilst I also recognise that Mr Bradford said it is the first inch and a half that is causing problems, we do need to recognise that we have had the wettest winter on record. That is no excuse, but that is a fact. Therefore, it is understandable that the flood water will stay longer than in anybody’s living memory, because we have had unprecedented amounts of rainfall.

Chair

We have had no dredging either.

Neil Parish

Going back to the Somerset Levels, two years ago this coming summer there was a tremendous amount of water out there again, and also a lot of rotting of the vegetation because of the time of year. You can understand it from their point of view. We may say, and all the arguments say, it is the wettest January for 250 years, but people out there do not see it like that, because it keeps doing it, and it has been doing it more repetitively over the last 10 years in particular. That is where they believe more needs to be done.

Martin Whiting

I understand that Defra has made some more money available, and the Environment Agency are about to start dredging activity down there, but that goes back to the point about prioritisation of the maintenance expenditure, and how that is best invested. One of the points was that we needed to start pumping earlier; clearly, until the water levels in the receiving river that you are pumping to have started to go down, all you are doing is to circulate the river by pumping it out from one point into the river channel; it is going downstream and it is coming out on the bank again. There is, and will always be, a delay before the start of any pumping operation following the flooding, because you need the receiving water, where it is being pumped to, to actually lower.

Neil Parish

Of course, this particular river, the Parrett, is so hugely affected by tidal surge and the tides.

Martin Whiting

Again, we had significant events right at the beginning of December, but that followed on into the new year as well. That is the plug that is going back into the discharge point where the river is trying to empty out into the sea as rapidly as possible.

Neil Parish

One last question: in the Somerset Levels, what other flood‑management measures would be beneficial alongside dredging?

Martin Whiting

The management of vegetation needs to be considered carefully, together with the point about management and operation of the pumping stations.

Chair

To return to your remark that you did not think dredging is sustainable, if I understood you correctly, did you mean dredging or did you mean managing vegetation and other maintenance as well?

Martin Whiting

No, just dredging, because it will continually return. Unless there is a change of the cross section of that river channel where the sediment is routinely building up, once you have dredged it, two or three years later you will have to come back and dredge it again. The repetitive nature is the element I considered unsustainable.

Chair

I have this problem with cleaning my house. I have no sooner cleaned my house than the dirt is back. My husband would say that is no reason not to clean. I am trying to get behind your argument for not dredging because it is going to come back, because that is no argument at all. You need to remove the silt so that we can make the water flow more quickly.

Martin Whiting

Madam Chairman, you clean your house at your expense. You do not clean your house at UK PLC’s expense.

Chair

I used to and I got into trouble for it. Touché, may I say? The point is, whether you are streaming the vegetation or streaming the silt, what we are trying to do, I understand, is to make the water flow more quickly to protect the farmers and the residents. Now, there is a big debate about whether farmland should be covered by public money, or whether we should just have the public money protecting the houses that then will not get any insurance if they have been flooded. Are you saying that it is not sustainable, therefore we should not do it, or are you saying that we should not do it on its own?

Martin Whiting

I am saying that we should not do it on its own. Again, as Mr Bradford highlighted, it might be a beneficial use of silt that is dredged to construct embankments around the communities and not try to build up flood banks along the watercourse, but just to protect those communities. That, certainly, is a system that they have used in the Netherlands to some extent.

Chair

I would argue that local people should decide. You should go with the local knowledge. If you are building up the bank because it is not polluted in one area, that might work. If you take the stuff and create a little dam upstream, you could use it as clay to stop the water flowing. I think you said earlier it should all be part of a catchment system, so we are not disagreeing with each other.

Martin Whiting

No, not at all, Madam Chairman.

Neil Parish

I want to take up Mr Whiting on the fact that the Chairman cleans her house at her own expense, and we clear out the ditches at public expense. If the rivers and seas flood, and so the railway line floods and everything else goes wrong, it causes a huge amount of public money to be lost, so therefore surely there is also an argument, at times, that dredging would be effective. If you take it across the Levels, it would cost £200 million to raise the level of that, whereas if we dredge the river, it may not flood.

Martin Whiting

It is a collaborative understanding of the benefits that will accrue from the maintenance work.

Chair

Mr Whiting, you have been very kind. We will not have you back, because you embarrassed the Chairman, but thank you very much indeed. We look forward to seeing you on another occasion. Thank you for being so generous with your time. Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses

Rob Cunningham and Martin Salter, Blueprint for Water Coalition, gave evidence.

Chair

Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome. May I say it is a particular pleasure to welcome our former colleague, Martin Salter? Martin, would you like to introduce yourself, and Mr Cunningham, just to say who you are and where you are from?

Martin Salter

I am Martin Salter, formerly of this parish. I now work as national campaigns coordinator for the Angling Trust. I am representing the Blueprint for Water Coalition, which commissioned the CIWEM report. I am particularly interested, Madam Chairman, in introducing the Lower Thames dynamic into your debate, because that is where I was brought up and that is where I know best.

Rob Cunningham

I am Rob Cunningham. I head up the water policy team at the RSPB, and I am here representing the Blueprint for Water Coalition.

Chair

You have been very kind in sitting in for most of the afternoon, so you will have heard and be familiar with many of the issues. Are you agreeable to the fact that dredging should be done as part of a routine maintenance? When I say “dredging”, I mean dredging, de‑silting, and maintaining by clearing the vegetation along the banks, such as self‑growing willow coppice.

Martin Salter

In some circumstances. The reason that the CIWEM report was commissioned and put together was there was a worry, as indeed Richard Benyon said in his excellent article recently, that politicians were leaping to judgments in the middle of a crisis, fuelled by media, and understandably wanted to be seen to do something without looking at studies and without looking at evidence. The conclusion of our report is quite clear for people that have had a chance to read it: dredging is no silver bullet. It is entirely appropriate in managed, artificial landscapes, particularly in the context of the Somerset Levels. What worried us is that there appeared, I think probably more in the media than out of the mouth of politicians, this view that it was a silver bullet that could solve flooding problems the world over. It clearly cannot. Dredging can make matters much worse. There is a finite amount of water in the catchment. It will find the lowest point, which is usually the sea or the aquifer. If we move the water down the catchment too fast, one person’s dredging can be another person’s flood, and we need to be extremely careful and approach this in an evidence‑based manner, which is what our report sought to do.

Rob Cunningham

One of the dimensions that has been discussed a lot this afternoon is around funding. Maybe we will be asked a specific question on it later, but one of the key issues is how we prioritise what we do; where do we get the best bang for our buck? Dredging is part of that mix. You have to appraise what benefits accrue from dredging against the other things you may do, whether it is upland catchment work or hard defences. At the moment, the maintenance and capital works are not comparable, so we do not actually know whether we are doing enough channel maintenance. We do not know whether it is one way or the other. The figures are not comparable.

Chair

Looking for a moment, if I may, specifically at the Thames Valley floods, there were some allegations that a lot of it was because of the building on floodplains, and presumably often no SUDS being built at the same time. Do you think that was a fair comment?

Martin Salter

I am delighted you have raised that. Can I put on the record that we very much appreciate the efforts of MPs like yourself in this place who have banged the drum for SUDS, with limited success? I spent 30 years of my life fighting to defend the Kennet floodplains on the junction of the Kennet and the Thames. One of the reasons my town has not flooded is because those floodplains were—the clue is in the name, is it not?—allowed to flood. We did not have a tsunami of water coming through the centre of Reading because we resisted, time and time again, building on those floodplains. What is really worrying is that, from the last figures I saw, there has been something like a 30% increase in applications to build in high flood risk areas. This is an area where we need more regulation, not less. I was disturbed to see, in the red tape challenge, that the Government were easing the requirement for environment impact assessments, making it more difficult for the Environment Agency and other authorities to resist development on the floodplain. A clear majority of new housing development over the last 15 years or so has been on the functional floodplain, sometimes against Environment Agency advice. I am very concerned, and I think all the coalition members are concerned, that we are going to see a weaker, not more strengthened, Environment Agency, and that we are weakening regulation at a time when we probably need it to be stronger to make sure the floodplains can do the job that nature intended, so I really do applaud your efforts in this regard.

Chair

I do not know if “retrofit” is the right word to use, but where developments have been built in inappropriate places on functioning floodplains, is it too late to go back and consider putting SUDS in place, and should there be an audit done to accommodate that?

Martin Salter

Rob knows better than I do, but Thames Water have a scheme in Counter's Creek in London at the moment, looking at retrofitting SUDS. Clearly, it is not an answer in terms of a big city like London; we are not ever going to be able to retrofit a major city, which is why solutions like the Thames tunnel are important. Certainly, in new developments, and certainly where there is the space to put in SUDS, balancing ponds and the rest of it, the cost of not doing so may be in excess of the cost of loading that on the local authority now.

Rob Cunningham

I would completely agree. Retrofitting of SUDS is not just in the floodplain, but in those places where there is surface water risk. I am delighted to see water companies increasingly looking at retrofitting schemes in those places where they are seeing their sewer capacity being overwhelmed. Unfortunately, retrofitting SUDS does not address the issue that, if you build on a floodplain, you still have a house at flood risk that is taking up the volume of water that would otherwise be standing on it in a flood, so, in terms of building on the floodplain, it will offer some benefits, but it will not undo the damage.

Chair

We are going to look in a moment at the impact on wildlife and ecosystems but, Mr Salter, you referred to the role of the Environment Agency. I certainly think there is an argument that the rules changed in the 2000s so that biodiversity became the priority, and the drainage boards carried on dredging at the right times of the year, obviously, to avoid nesting birds, but the word went out on main watercourses that the Environment Agency were not to continue doing the dredging and maintenance. Do you think that is a fair argument?

Martin Salter

No, I am afraid I do not. I am going to disagree with you there. We shared Radio Berkshire this morning, as it happens.

Chair

I am sorry I missed you.

Martin Salter

There you go. There was no diktat from Government at the time. There was a preference from the then chair of the Environment Agency, but there was no political decision to stop dredging. I think it is regrettable if we do try to politicise this. Dredging on the Thames stopped in the 1980s, and it stopped in the 1980s for a very, very good reason: it had been tried for many, many years, and when the buckets were going down into the hard bed of the river, they were pulling up bronze‑age relics. That river has not changed in 3,000 years; it self‑scoured, so it was a largely pointless exercise. Dredging stopped in the 1980s as, in any way, shape or form, a flood‑risk management activity, and it was purely done to maintain the navigation. So limited dredging still occurs, but to maintain the navigation. This may be slightly out of order, Madam Chairman, but we do hear a lot of armchair hydrologists out there, and it is understandable. I have an aerial photograph, which I will leave with you for the purposes of your report, of the British Isles on 16 February. This plume of silt is beyond Wales. The amount of Herefordshire and Worcester that was transported into the Irish Sea by the self-scouring power of the Severn and the Thames in roaring flood is more than any dredger could ever move in 100 years. Our rivers are dynamic systems. They will do what they want to do. We can tame some of them, and we can manage some of them, particularly in reclaimed land, but it is often a fool’s errand to seek to dredge a river that will self‑scour naturally. In the Thames catchment, we protected something like 3,000 properties by the creation of the Jubilee River, which took flood water away from the properties. I will just make this last point. The other day, I asked the Environment Agency flood defence people to do me an assessment of the impact of dredging the Thames catchment, of going back to the pre‑1980s policy. The results are fascinating; if I could just read them into the record, I would be really grateful. The average daily flow on the Lower Thames at Windsor is 65 cubic metres per second. At the height of the flood, for 44 days it was averaging 280 cubic metres per second, so more than four times the flow. The daily flow coming down at the flood peak is 5.5 billion gallons of water. Forget the fact that that can move a lot of silt, but the impact on those Lower Thames communities was cataclysmic, and this was a record level of flooding. Had we been dredging the Upper Thames catchment, had we been dredging those tributaries, had we been putting some dredging protection around Oxford, for argument’s sake, we would have been sending down 10% extra water onto those already flooded communities in the Lower Thames. That equates to 550 million gallons extra a day. That is the point. There are the unintended consequences of dredging, and you have to look at the management of the catchment as a whole. We would have made a bad situation much worse and put anything between six inches to a foot of extra flood water in people’s homes.

Chair

I think you would accept that what might work in the Thames may not work in other catchments. We should not just look at dredging alone; we should look at de‑silting and removing the vegetation as well. I would argue you should go with local knowledge

Martin Salter

This is local knowledge.

Chair

There is no one‑size‑fits‑all.

Martin Salter

I could not agree with you more, Madam Chairman. This is from Dick Greenaway, who spent 30 years as the head surveyor on that river for the old National Rivers Authority and Thames Conservancy. This is local knowledge in the raw. The point I am making is that, just as the Thames is not the template for the Somerset Levels, the Somerset Levels are not the template for the Wye or the Severn or the other natural rivercourses in this country, and that is the huge danger in this debate.

Rob Cunningham

You asked quite specifically whether it was a shift from the National Rivers Authority to the Environment Agency that had stopped dredging. I would say, actually, it was more than anything else an economic policy around protecting property. I do not know whether you have had them as witnesses; I do apologise . A lot of that is around how we maintain universal private flood insurance. There is a deal, as you will be aware, around maintaining a statement of principles, I think it is.

Chair

We are looking at that separately.

Rob Cunningham

The important thing is that part of that deal is maintaining, improving and reducing flood risk to property, so there is a very clear objective around that in the current and previous funding systems.

Chair

With the greatest of respect, I accept that for capital expenditure, but I do not think it is by any means so clear as to revenue and maintenance expenditure.

Neil Parish

I want to come in on the concept that a lot of our properties, towns and cities in the UK are in floodplains, because the rivers were used to navigate and trade. What do we do in the long run? Is your argument that we just abandon all these places? If we do not want to clean out the rivers, do we raise the banks of the rivers? We do not want people to flood. I’m sorry, but I don’t care whether it is environmentally friendly or not; at the end of the day, people do not want to be flooded. Therefore, if the argument is not to dredge out the rivers, surely we raise the banks, but the acquired wisdom does not seem to want to do either. So we just allow everybody to flood, do we?

Martin Salter

Nobody has said that, and this report does not say that. You know that this report does not say that, Mr Parish.

Neil Parish

What is the answer? Do we raise the banks?

Martin Salter

We support the things like the Jubilee River, which is an engineering solution. We have raised banks here in London. If we are to protect people from flooding, though, and if we are to accept, as Madam Chairman has said, that there are incredibly effective upland storage schemes, that will involve some flooding of some land further up the catchment in order to protect greater numbers of people. Is it not perverse that we pay I do not know how many billions in common agricultural payments, and we incentivise, in some cases, farming practices that can make flooding worse? This is a holistic approach we have to have here. A lot of this is about land management. Part of that map you have in front of you is to do with the way fields are planned. Part of that is to do with the failure to put in proper buffer strips. It seems to me wrong that one should want to pay farmers not to allow their cattle to tread down the side of the bank and move silt to the neighbouring farm downstream. We have all got to accept responsibility, either through the taxes that we pay, through the agencies that we employ and resource to support us, or the capital schemes, in order to have a source‑to‑sea solution. It is not just about banks; it is not just about dredging.

Neil Parish

Where you do actually think digging out the rivers and some dredging would do some good, is it right that, provided it is non‑contaminated, that silt is then used a fertiliser and spread on the land? Have you got any problem with that?

Rob Cunningham

Ascertaining it is not contaminated is a really important point, because no one wants to be poisoning their land in the long term. Do we have a problem with it? There is the issue of loss of floodplain storage if it is disposed on the floodplain, so that has to be thought of, and, again, the perverse impact. If you raise your floodplains, you lose flood storage; that is one of the issues. We heard already that you want to be very careful that you do not put it in a place where it will simply end up back into the watercourse and be your next year’s maintenance programme. Long term, if you are using it, you have to be thinking about the point that was made earlier that it has nutrients in it. If it is to benefit agriculture, you want to be very careful. If you put phosphate and nitrogen‑rich sediment on a very precious grassland ecosystem, that will wipe it out in very short order. It is just recognising its properties, and making sure it is part of part of your nutrient budget so you are not just piling more and more nutrients on your soil. There have been places where capturing topsoil before it actually reaches a watercourse and then recycling it back onto the land is part of the overall scheme design. At the end of the day, silt is topsoil.

Neil Parish

We are only suggesting spreading this very thinly over the land. In times of flood, surely nature has been doing that for hundreds and thousands of years, has it not? Isn’t that why those valleys are fertile in the first place?

Rob Cunningham

Absolutely, and parts of Humber were warped, as they called it, quite deliberately, to bring nutrients onto the landscape. The question is about being very conscious of the choices you are making, also bearing in mind the outcome of the dredging that you are undertaking. Is it land drainage, or is it flood‑risk management? Where are the benefits accruing from your actions? In lots of circumstances, dredging will lower water levels locally. That will benefit land drainage; it may have no benefit for flood risk, because, in the large events, the water will come out of the channel anyway.

Neil Parish

Therefore, you oppose land drainage, then, do you?

Rob Cunningham

I do not oppose land drainage. There is a question of appropriateness in terms of the land use, and also a question over who pays and who benefits from that. There is a very clear position at the moment that flood‑risk management is different from land drainage; flood‑risk management is about protecting people and property from extreme events. Land drainage is about protecting land from annual and very frequent events.

Mrs Glindon

Can I ask you both how wildlife and ecosystems can be protected during dredging activities?

Rob Cunningham

First of all, we have to differentiate between natural watercourses and non‑natural watercourses. I would just like to state for the record there is a wealth of evidence that will show that, if you have a natural river system where the connection between the river channel and the floodplain has not been altered either by defences or dredging, both the floodplain and the river ecosystem are richer and more diverse. In those circumstances, talking about protecting it is a bit of a nonsense; it will change, and you will change it, and it will be degraded. That is the natural watercourse. In terms of artificial or heavily modified watercourses, it has already been touched on by my colleague from CIWEM; there is extensive literature out there, joint guidance from the Association of Drainage Authorities and Natural England about sensitive approaches to river maintenance and channel maintenance. It is really critical, though, that it is site‑specific, and you understand the sensitivity of the channel and the ecosystem you are dealing with.

Martin Salter

I know a bit about fish; it would be sad if I did not—well, it is sad that I do. A lot of studies have been done before and after dredging. The Lower Great Ouse is obviously a heavily modified system, and it comes down into the Fens. It is not dissimilar to parts of the Somerset Levels. We have seen there, with the heavy modification and big dredging projects, at times, often the extinction of some fish populations, particularly those that need fast‑flowing water, those that need clear gravels on which to spawn. There was a study done in 1985 on the last bit of dredging that took place in the Thames catchment, which was on the River Thame, a tributary of the Thames in Buckingham. It looked at the non-dredged versus the dredged impacts. We saw the biomass of common species like roach and chub reduced by 31% and 64% respectively. Even after many years of attempts to recruit, those fish were never recruited successfully, so, yes, it can have a significant impact. It can have an impact on water voles. It can have an impact on white‑clawed crayfish and obviously the food chain that depends upon it. That said, it is about making choices. If the dredge is going to make a difference, if it is part of land drainage, for example, then there is a consequence, but there may be a benefit. If it is part of flood‑risk management, we would argue, dredging is very rarely, apart from in artificial landscapes, a sensible flood‑risk management tool, and at that point, one also has to look at the environmental considerations.

Mrs Glindon

Do you agree with the Floods and Dredging report that sensitive dredging can have a positive effect on biodiversity?

Martin Salter

I have never seen it.

Rob Cunningham

Again, it comes back to exactly what kind of system you are dealing with. If you go to some places like the Fens, which would, historically, back in the day, have been a large patchwork of wetlands and dry land, through drainage now the wetland interest is really in the ditches. The ditches are essentially the last refuges of wetland biodiversity that would have been much more widespread. Those ditches are not subject to the kind of natural shocks—the big floods, the herbivores and all the other things that would have created them—so, in those circumstances, dredging plays a role. If those ditches silted up, you would lose your wetland interest, but the really important thing is, you have to do it sensitively. If you dredge that ditch or watercourse from end to end, without any kind of programming or whatever, it would be heavily degraded. There are ways, and, like I say, it is widely accepted and there are industry standards on these things. It is not a big issue.

Martin Salter

Can I qualify my rather glib answer, Mrs Glindon? I have never seen a natural watercourse improved in terms of biodiversity as a result of dredging. However, if one dredges a channel, be it many years ago the Huntspill or the King’s Sedgemoor Drain, one can create a wonderful aquatic environment, so there can be upsides. It is not the act of dredging; it is the creation of a new watercourse that dredging delivered. Perhaps that is a semantic argument, but hopefully I get the point across.

Rob Cunningham

The Jubilee River would be an example.

Jim Fitzpatrick

Mr Cunningham and Mr Salter, you will have heard me asking previous witnesses about the division of responsibility for maintenance and dredging between the various authorities. Have you got a view on whether the responsibility is an issue, or is it, as the previous witnesses were saying, about the level of funding for the task in hand?

Martin Salter

The trashing of the Environment Agency on television was a low point in British politics, and the Prime Minister was right to move against that. Chris Smith was right when he said that most of the people working in flood defence know 100 times more than any politician. Richard Benyon was right to warn against politicians trying to be armchair hydrologists, so I would like to just put that on the record. I also believe that climate change is happening, that we are going to be having a lot more of these flood events, and that we need a stronger, not weaker, Environment Agency. In terms of the division of responsibilities, Pitt was quite clear. What worries me, Jim, on the back end of this, is that we will end up with more reviews and more reports, but we are not very good—I think Madam Chairman made this point on radio this morning—at implementing the reviews we have. Local authorities were given a stronger role under Pitt, but not the resources to carry it out. I would hope you would, in your recommendations, focus on how local authorities are actually supposed to deliver the new responsibilities that Pitt gave them. In my area, if I may, we nearly had 70,000 people without power, purely because West Berkshire Council’s emergency plan—no fault of their own, I am sure—did not listen to the local people. The local person, in this case, was Del Shackleford, the fisheries manager for Reading & District Angling Association, who was trying to tell the fire brigade, the police, and the local authority that the reason this substation was being surrounded with water coming out of the gravel pits was not about dredging a ditch in front of it. It was the fact that there was a socking great breach in the River Kennet a mile upstream, and millions of gallons of water were pouring in and flooding that whole landscape. It was not really until gold command had run out of ideas and phoned up the local fishery manager that the army came in and plugged the breach, and despite the fact that the Kennet continued to rise, the substation dried out. If the local authority had had a better view and better resources, understood how water moved through the catchment, and listened to Del Shackleford and the local people in Reading, that emergency, with 70,000 people without power at the height of a flood, could have been avoided. As it was, we did not have the outage, but we were that far away from it.

Rob Cunningham

To go back to the point I made earlier, one of the issues we have is that there is no clarity over the benefits of the maintenance programme and the capital programme, and how one would balance those two things. Then there is an awful lot of confusion around the funding of the various flood authorities. There is a lot of focus on the Environment Agency’s budget, but, obviously, local authorities are supported through central taxation as well. They in turn support internal drainage boards, as well as undertaking their own work. On average, something between half and three-quarters of IDB income is through special levy. The funding rules for that are different to the Environment Agency’s funding rules. I have no idea how the local authority make their decisions between funding a school that definitely needs funding this year and a flood that might happen at some point in the next 100 years. Between the capital and the maintenance, and between these local and central Government funds, how that is all prioritised to best effect I do not know, but it just strikes me as being very complex and opaque.

Jim Fitzpatrick

So do you think the reductions in Environment Agency staff—there were one or two comments earlier on—are being balanced out by the other agencies being able to fill the gap, or do you think those staff are not needed? Is this an issue that concerns you?

Rob Cunningham

One of the comments that has been made is that the cuts do not affect frontline staff. I am not sure that is true, but if, as I do believe, climate change is happening, if we believe the Met Office that what we are seeing is entirely consistent with what that kind of change is going to bring us, if we look at the reviews we have had, like the Pitt review, one thing we really need to do is think strategically and long-term. It is absolutely no good cutting the Environment Agency to the point where it is an emergency response vehicle. It needs to be thinking long-term, and have the resources to do that.

Chair

At the moment they are trousering the resources and not doing the work, so there would seem some sense in reverting the money back to the drainage boards to do the work.

Rob Cunningham

It is interesting that what was not discussed earlier was the fact that the Environment Agency also pay the IDBs, so there is a circularity of funding. I think the balance is slightly in favour of the IDBs—that the Environment Agency gives the IDB slightly more money.

Chair

Given the figures that we heard on the record from the drainage boards and the district councils together—almost £1 million, £800,000 a piece, for two rivers—it is a sizeable sum of money to go to the Environment Agency for no apparent work to be done.

Rob Cunningham

The Environment Agency is big enough and ugly enough to defend itself, but when I walk along those rivers, I see Environment Agency assets. It is not as though they do not operate in that area. They may not have done dredging, but they do other things. It is entirely appropriate to ask, “What do you get for the money?” and why we have this rather convoluted system where the IDBs pay the Environment Agency a sum of money, and then through another arcane process the Environment Agency pays the IDBs money, and no one is quite clear who is getting what for what.

Jim Fitzpatrick

Finally from me, you already commented a wee bit about the role of farmers and landowners. You may wish to elaborate on that. Specifically, on the seven landowner watercourse maintenance pilots, you will have heard that Mr Whiting disagreed with the initial panel as to whether or not the pilots should be accelerated to conclusion and rolled out, as opposed to allowed to run their course for all the evidence to be heard. Do you have a view as to which of those two is more appropriate?

Martin Salter

On the Environment Agency point, it is a myth that flood staff are being protected. There is a huge amount of backfilling taking place. You might table a parliamentary question asking how many fisheries staff, since Christmas, have been helping out in flood defence. A weakened Environment Agency is a weaker flood defence operation, full stop. I have no problems, Jim, with stripping out waste, reorganising the funding streams or whatever, but we need troops on the ground if we are to be able to deal with this situation. In terms of the pilots, I think the pilots are completely irrelevant, frankly. If the problem was too much regulation—and it is the same regulation when we go into a river system wanting to do habitat restoration; we have to get consent—and if that consent process was too slow for the farmer to de-silt or the environmental group to do habitat restoration, let’s have a fast‑track consent process. We did not need these pilots. One of the last lot of pilots that took place in 2011, on the Windrush, was abandoned because it was going to cause more flooding downstream. Water flows downhill; there is always a consequence of doing something in some part of the catchment. I am very, very suspicious of meddling around with bits of the catchment and not looking at the issue as a whole. I really do not think these pilots are addressing the issue. The issue is better, cleverer regulation and consent processes, not pilots, which are not going to teach us much, in my judgment.

Rob Cunningham

If I could add to that, actually, the Water Bill going through Parliament at the moment, specifically in the environmental permits and regulation section, offers the opportunity for the Secretary of State to table regulations that would create a hierarchy of consenting. But let’s be really clear: these pilots are not about whether or not landowners need to get a land drainage consent. They can still apply for a land drainage consent. It is about land drainage, really. This was one of the things from the CIWEM review, but I think even if you just do a thought experiment, you need to think about dredging at a catchment level. If you really believe that moving water through the system in this particular place is critical to flood risk management, that has to be more than an individual farmer working on their piece of land. Yes, that might improve their land drainage, but it could have negative downstream impacts. Let’s face it, land drainage consenting is also important; land drainage consenting far predates all the environmental legislation we are talking about. It was about protecting people against flood risk. It had been turned into the tool we use for environmental protection, but it is about protecting people downstream from the unintended consequences of land drainage as well.

Chair

Apologies; I am going to slip away. Jim Fitzpatrick will take the Chair.

Neil Parish

I will word my question quite carefully. In rivers that are manmade, where dredging is seen to do some good, can you then bring in planting of woodlands upstream, establishing flood storage areas, as well as clearing and dredging the rivers, or are those two approaches mutually exclusive?

Martin Salter

Absolutely not. There was an excellent little myth‑buster on dredging by the ADA, which made it quite clear that dredging is one tool in the toolbox, and no more than that. The Prime Minister said in his own constituency, on the River Windrush, since we were talking about that, that wholesale dredging of the Thames catchment is clearly insane, and would endanger the fringes of London, as we have demonstrated. You will always have pinchpoints, though, so there is always an argument for ensuring that there is sufficient clearance under the bridges; there is always an argument, as well, where we have the opportunity to store water higher up the catchment, to do so, to reconnect that river with its floodplain. It may be we have to pay farmers to do that. There is always an argument for improved farming practices, so we are not planting crops like maize, which compact the soil and cause all sorts of problems, so it is a whole suite of solutions. Dredging has a small part to play in the natural watercourse. It is not completely ruled out in our view, but it is a catchment‑based approach. We are talking about water that is trying to get to the sea, here. We are not talking about an isolated problem in one farm, one village or one town.

Neil Parish

Now Jim is in the Chair, I am going to carry on with my previous question. Taking the logical conclusion that across the country many of us live on a floodplain, if the rivers cannot be dredged, or you maintain dredging the rivers will not do any good—in certain rivers, I would accept that—then surely you raise the banks. What you cannot do is allow people to be flooded, and infrastructure to be flooded. You also have to stop your sea coming in, because that is what the Dutch do. They do not actually retreat from their country, because they would not have a country, and I am not exaggerating with most of the Netherlands. Therefore, what are we going to do about it? We are not going to walk away from the Thames Valley; we are not going to let all those people flood; we are not going to let London flood; we are not going to let the cities flood, so what are we going to do about it? If we cannot dredge the rivers, are you against raising the banks to stop it?

Martin Salter

We build things like the Thames Barrier, which has been fantastically successful. We build things like the Jubilee River. We have high walls here. We have hard engineering solutions. It is not all about pink, fluffy bunny solutions further up the catchment.

Neil Parish

Not all bunnies are pink, by the way.

Martin Salter

It is a combination of both, Mr Parish, and I think you know that answer.

Rob Cunningham

Can I make one factual correction? The Dutch do retreat. The Dutch have one of the largest nature reserve cum flood‑storage retreats in, probably, the world, certainly Northern Europe, called Oostvaardersplassen. It is so large, they run wild herds of konik ponies, which is the closest relative we have to pre‑tamed ponies. It is a massive area. It is a huge biodiversity resource. It is a huge industry in terms of tourism. So they do do that. If you cast your mind back to the previous Government’s Making Space for Water strategy, they shamelessly stole that title from the Dutch. Making space for water, setting back the dykes, re‑engineering farming, moving farms wholesale out of the floodplain is a really big part of their strategy. In terms of the overall answer, of course we defend those places where we need to defend them. London has some of the highest standards of defence in the country because the economic consequences of not doing so are huge. Somerset Levels and Moors have not qualified under the existing rules for that level of investment. One of the really interesting questions that the logic of this leads us to is: what do we do for communities and landowners in those places where flood risk will inevitably rise? Under any funding scenario, there will always be difficult questions. The number one gap in policy that no one has really filled is the adaptation and resilience funding. Basically, at the moment, the Environment Agency has a set of rules laid down by Defra, and it goes along and says, “Okay, do you or don’t you qualify economically?” If you do, they run all their clever spreadsheets, and they fiddle it a bit sometimes, and they come up with an answer, and if you do not, all they do is they walk away. I personally think that that is unacceptable. It is not necessarily a flood‑risk management issue, but there is a definite question of social justice, and a definite question about what you do for those communities. This was completely foreseen, unsurprisingly, by the Foresight report from 2004 where it talked about how we adapt and how we avoid this kind of outrage. We can change the funding rules; we can theoretically engineer just about anywhere not to flood, but, at some point, it will become unaffordable. When it becomes unaffordable, what do we do for the people left behind? That is the number one question that we need to tackle.

Neil Parish

As a final question on the Levels, if we were to get funding together for a tidal sluice, say at the Bridgwater side of the Parrett, in order to stop that tide driving the fresh water out and flooding further upstream, which potentially floods Bridgwater and Taunton eventually, would you have any objection to it?

Martin Salter

I can see no objection to it. I am not a particular expert, but I have certainly been involved, along with my colleagues and RSPB, in helping make the case against the Severn Barrage, in favour of some of those more modular solutions. You have some interesting options in the Severn, and I can see no objections at all. In response to your question on Holland, just for the record, the Dutch are not all about dykes and dredging. They are quite an interesting mixture. They have encouraged floodplain development, advocated by the Dutch Government, for the stimulation of the floodplains of the Rhine and Meuse, to increase them by reducing agricultural land and allowing the rehabilitation of natural grasslands, wetlands, dynamic braided or secondary river branches. The Dutch adopt that suite of suggestions. It is not just about dredging; it is not just about dykes. It is also about uplands, storage and reconnecting rivers to their floodplains.

Neil Parish

You also have to accept that, when you drive through the Netherlands, you are driving up here, the water is down there and they still manage to keep that clear, and they manage to pump their water into the rivers, which are well above land level. They may be retreating in various places, but they are not retreating from land like we are retreating from; they are retreating from land that is well below sea level, because a lot of their land is well below sea level.

Martin Salter

Mr Parish, there are 3 million people who go fishing in this country. There are 1 million members of the RSPB. We love our natural rivers in Britain, and they are valued. If a strong enough case can be made for turning some of them into soulless drainage channels in order to protect certain communities, fine, but the idea that this becomes a wholesale policy without political consequences is an idea for the birds and for the fish.

Rob Cunningham

The Dutch spend at least twice as much per GDP on their flood risk management, and even then they are retreating from places. It is really important that it does not matter how much money you choose to throw at this; there will be tough choices to make. In terms of the tidal sluice, surely the answer is: what is most effective? What can we afford; what is the most effective; who pays; who benefits? Those are really clear questions we need to ask. If, at the end of the day, a tidal sluice on the Parrett is the only solution, it is affordable and it is necessary to protect vulnerable communities, then that is a decision, but we have to be really clear about the choice we are making, and whether or not there are other alternatives.

Jim Fitzpatrick (in the Chair)

Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here today with our other witnesses. We are very grateful for your time and expertise. I am not sure I entirely agree with Mr Cunningham’s description of the last Government shamelessly stealing anything—of perhaps proudly borrowing; copying; trying to do the best; looking at European experience.

Rob Cunningham

It is a really good strategy.

Jim Fitzpatrick (in the Chair)

It is a good strategy. What we need to do is to copy the success. Thank you so much for being here. I am very grateful to you. Oral evidence: Winter Floods, HC 991 32