In Lincolnshire, Environment Agency staff are working 24/7 alongside the emergency services to protect people and property after a river embankment breached at Wainfleet.
In an effort to reduce flood waters, Environment Agency field teams are operating an ultra-high volume pump, capable of pump 5 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water every hour away from the town. This is now reducing water levels and the repaired breach continues to hold.
The river banks were put under extraordinary pressure because of the extreme amount of rainfall that occurred – more than twice the monthly average in only a couple of days – and subsequently breached.
There has been some news reporting that breach was caused by badger damage or could have been avoided by dredging. EA has stated categorically this is not the case.
Ahead of more rain forecast tomorrow, Flooding Minister Thérèse Coffey and Environment Agency Chair Emma Howard-Boyd made a visit to the area on Monday to see the work the Environment Agency and partners are doing to keep the public safe. Minister Coffey said: “I do believe the Environment Agency and the local authorities working with the fire and rescue service will be able to cope and I just want to encourage people to be safe in the next couple of days”.
The public can check their flood risk, sign up for free flood warnings and keep up to date with the latest situation at https://www.gov.uk/check-flood-risk, call Floodline on 0345 988 1188 or follow @EnvAgency on Twitter for the latest flood updates.
If you’re in the Lincolnshire area please check the Lincolnshire Police website for the latest
1 comment
Comment by William Hughes-Games posted on
It is only going to get worse before it gets better (if it ever does at any time scale that people alive today will benefit from). So what's to do. It is actually very simple technically but as usual the problem is to convince people to act. There are two necessary steps.
1. Get absolutely fanatic about having beavers in every possible location in the catchment. They have the most amazing effect in mitigating down stream flood peaks. and this is the least of the benefits they bring. https://mtkass.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-to-get-beaver-back.html
2. Adopt the farming methods described by David R Montgomery in his book "Growing a Revolution". One amongst many effects of this type of farming is to direct much more water into the soil instead of running off directly into the nearest water way. https://mtkass.blogspot.com/2017/08/restoring-our-soils.html
But as usual the neigh sayers (spelling intentional) will balk at either idea.