Deluge dilemma: UK lacks flood funds to protect both town & country
The UK will be forced to choose between towns or the countryside in the struggle to protect against the worst floods in over 50 years. The Environmental Agency has warned the funds simply do not exist to safeguard against the rising floodwaters.
Following a week of floods that have left large swathes of the UK
underwater, the chairman of the Environmental Agency has said
Britain faces difficult choices on which areas it wants to
defend.
“There’s no bottomless purse of money, and we need to make
difficult but sensible choices about where and what we try to
protect,” Lord Smith of Finsbury told the Telegraph on
Sunday.
As a result, the chairman said the authorities will have to
prioritize on which areas they protect from the rising waters, as
the government does not have the money to safeguard both urban
and rural areas.
Addressing allegations that the government has dealt poorly with
the crisis situation, the chairman likened the freak weather to
the floods of 1953 which resulted in the death of over 300
people. There is no “quick fix” for the situation, he
said.
The agency estimates that this weekend’s storms left a further
180 homes in Southwest England underwater, adding to the 1,700
homes that have been affected by flooding in December and
January. Winds of over 70mph (113kph) coupled with high tides
buffeted the south coast this weekend, prompting the
Environmental Agency to issue over 350 flood alerts.
Moreover, the authorities have urged British citizens to brace
for more flooding as torrential rains are forecast to continue
well into February.
"Strong winds and high waves could cause flooding along the
whole of the south coast on Tuesday and into Wednesday,”
said the agency in a statement.
‘Lynch mob’
The conservative government has come under fire for its treatment
of the floods, with local MPs accusing David Cameron’s government
of not acting soon enough.
The critics prompted Cameron to intervene personally, overruling
the Environmental Agency to send troops into the county of
Somerset to aid in delivering food, transporting people and
distributing sandbags. The PM admitted the situation was
“unacceptable” and said that dredging would begin as
soon as the area was safe.
"We are urgently exploring what further help the government
can give local residents to move around and I rule nothing out in
the days ahead to get this problem sorted,” the PM said in a
statement last week.
Meanwhile, Tory minister Ken Clarke likened the criticism to a
“lynch mob” that had been taken out of context by media
hysteria.
“This is the winter. It is wet. It has rained. It may be made worse by climate change,” said Clarke to the BBC.
