These floods were not just predictable; they were predicted. There were clear and specific warnings that the management of land upstream of the towns now featuring in the news would lead to disaster. On 9 December one of my readers told me this. “I live in the middle of Foss drainage board land above York, where flooding would not harm a single property but water is sent down as fast as possible to York.” A few days later another reader wrote to me, warning that “upstream flood banks now protect crops, not the city of York”. On 26 December the Foss exploded into York.
It is a complaint I’ve heard repeatedly: internal drainage boards – which are public bodies but tend to be mostly controlled by landowners – often prioritise the protection of farmland above the safety of towns and cities downstream. By straightening, embanking and dredging rivers where they cut through fields, the boards accelerate the flow of water, making flooding downstream more likely. When heavy rain falls, some land must flood. We have a choice: fields or cities. And all over Britain, we have chosen badly.
For several years campaigners in Hebden Bridge have been begging the government to stop the drainage and burning of the grouse moors upstream. Eighteen months ago I visited the town, where activists told me that thanks to the damage inflicted on the bogs and deep vegetation of the moors, which reduces their capacity to hold water, it was only a matter of time before Hebden Bridge was wrecked again by flash floods. Their warnings were not just ignored, but – if such a thing is possible – actively disregarded.
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In 2011, the government body Natural England launched a prosecution of the estate, citing “illegal works” on the moor. The estate was charged with 45 offences, 30 of which involved building allegedly unauthorised drainage channels. It denied all criminal activity. In 2012, as Mark Avery documents in his book Inglorious, something very odd happened. After £1m had been spent on the case it was suddenly dropped. Instead, Natural England struck an agreement with the estate under which the owner of Walshaw Moor would be given £2.5m of public money, in the form of a special package of enhanced farm subsidies, to carry on more or less as before, without reversing what were alleged to have been illegal works.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/29/deluge-farmers-flood-grouse-moor-drain-land
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