"It’s Absolute Madness": Somerset Farmer Warns of Fresh Floods as River Maintenance Is Cut
Farmers on the Somerset Levels are warning of rising flood risk after the Environment Agency announced it will stop maintaining many rivers and streams across the county
Farmers on the Somerset Levels are warning of rising flood risk after the Environment Agency announced it will stop maintaining many rivers and streams across the county.
Bridgwater farmer, James Winslade, whose home and land were devastated in the 2014 floods, described the decision as “absolute madness.”
“Not only for local communities and the people that live on the moors… it’s going to have huge effect to Somerset because this is Somerset wide,” he said.
The 2014 floods forced James and his family to evacuate, leaving water in homes for three months and destroying crops:
“We lost everything. We couldn’t farm for over six months and then we didn’t get back into our houses for 11 months… my insurance went up threefold. And now, if we flood again, to get any works done, my excess is 45,000 pounds.”
He compared the importance of river maintenance to caring for a car:
“If you don’t do maintenance on something that’s man-made, it will happen again. You need to MOT it, you need to change the oil in it to keep it running. It’s very much the same as all the watercourses and sub-assets on the Levels.”
James also highlighted the environmental impact:
“We saw so much devastation to the wildlife. It’s taken 10 years for a lot of wildlife to come back to the Somerset Levels… and they’re going to destroy it.”
He stressed that extreme weather makes proper maintenance more important than ever:
“We have bigger weather storms… The system can’t cope with that amount of rainfall all at once. If the systems aren’t clean and maintained, the water cannot flow through the Levels and moors to get to the pumping stations.”
“It’s just getting wider and wider and taking up more and more land… it’s a huge mental toll and strain. And we’re going back to it again because we know what happened in 2014.”
“A lot of times, if farmers and the locals were listened to, a lot of time these events would be less or not at all.”
An Environment Agency spokesperson confirmed the cuts are part of a prioritisation plan:
“We have made the decision to reduce discretionary vegetation cutting on some specific sections of watercourses because the work we have been doing has been identified as having a relatively low flood risk benefit compared to areas with more properties.
“The Environment Agency has to prioritise what works can be delivered to minimise flood risk with the funding available.
“We will continue to manage the risk of flooding and maintain our assets, flood alleviation schemes and monitoring watercourses to provide flood warning services.”
Despite the Agency’s assurances, James remains concerned about the impact on Somerset’s communities, farms, and wildlife:
“It’s absolute madness… If the systems aren’t maintained, the next big flood is coming, and we’re all going to pay the price.”