New UK Environment Head - Nation Must Decide Which Coasts To Protect, Which To Let Go - Independent

[hatrack]

Stretches of Britain's coastline are doomed and plans will soon have to be drawn up to evacuate people from the most threatened areas, the new head of the Environment Agency warns today.

In his first interview since taking office, Lord Smith of Finsbury says Britain faces hard choices over which areas of our coast to defend and which to allow the sea to reclaim. He said detailed work was already far advanced on identifying areas of the east and south coasts which were most vulnerable to erosion, and called on ministers to give emergency help to families whose homes will be lost.

EDIT

Lord Smith disclosed that the agency was drawing up projections of where sea erosion will do most damage over the next five, 25, 50 and 100 years. It is also factoring in the additional problem of the threat to low-lying areas from rising sea levels. "This is the most difficult issue we are going to face as an agency," he said. "We know the sea is eating away at the coast in quite a number of places, primarily – but not totally exclusively – on the east and south coasts. It's a particularly huge issue in East Anglia, but in quite a number of other areas as well."

Lord Smith, a former culture secretary, promised to do his "level best to try to defend communities where there are significant numbers of properties under threat and where it's possible to find engineering solutions". But he said the agency, working with ministers, would have to identify "priority areas" and warned: "We are almost certainly not going to be able to defend absolutely every bit of coast – it would simply be an impossible task both in financial terms and engineering terms." Suggesting that parts of north-east Norfolk and Suffolk faced the most immediate danger, Lord Smith promised to work closely with the communities involved to achieve as much "consensus" as possible over which coastal stretches to protect.

EDIT

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/stark-warning-on-britains-shrinking-coast-900638.html

[truthisfreedom]

1. This is something the US has to face as well, but this administration is so head-in-the-sand about

Climate Change that they'll never squeak out a single peep about it... fact is, Florida and a lot of the east coast is mostly lost... much of California...

[enid602]

2. west

The map shows how most western coastal areas are hilly/mountainous. I grew up 1/2 block from the beach in LA, but it was hundreds of feet above sea level.