Dredging now will encourage rapid draining as we all know, but without managing this resource by more containment we will encourage drought when rainfall is low. Spend the money on forward looking planners and containment.
Absolutely - proper containment is the way forward. Swimming pools for everyone!
Quite amused by the story about Prince William and the Guardian reporter this morning, although it begs the question, do you really need special clothing to handle sandbags?
You keep plastic bags full of sandbags, Colin? Where do you keep all that lot?
My solution would be, instead of using sand, fill the sandbags (they'd have to be plastic of course) with water and then not only are you protecting your property but you're also using up some of the floodwater at the same time.
I keep my sandbags in plastic bags to stop water getting through the sand when they're put in place, and to stop the material the sandbag is made of rotting.x
You are likely to end up with an unstable barrier using this approach due to the low interface friction between plastic bags.
Dredging seems to be the universal answer that everybody is spouting, which just shows a complete lack of knowledge of the subject. Part of the problem is that there is nothing to hold the water back and it all comes down en masse, something that dredging will only make worse. So it doesn't stop the problem, it just moves it downstream. It also innundates downstream with silt, and can cause increased erosion upstream. The floods we're having how are natures way of de-silting rivers.
And yesterday I heard someone saying that dredging the Thames all the way downstream from Maidenhead was the answer. They obviously haven't noticed the things called weirs that actually control the water level, and so dredging will make absolutely no difference to the capacity of the river, it will just make it's normal state deeper because the weirs sets the level. If the weir is 50 feet above sea level and the river is 10 feet deep, removing 3 feet of silt will just make the river 13 feet deep but still 50 feet above sea level. The only way to get more capacity on the Thames would be to raise the level of the banks all the way to London.
Comments
"dire" is good too
I bet they are
Noah (2014):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1959490/
They shouldn't put flood plains near people's houses.
Absolutely - proper containment is the way forward. Swimming pools for everyone!
Well, all Tory voters, obviously.
It is cold and sunny today but going to be wet again tomorrow.
I blame Eric Pickles.
Can't Pickles be used as some sort of flood defence? He's must be worth at least thirty sandbags.
There's a Steve Bell cartoon in the Guardian today in which the flooding problems are solved when they lift Pickles out of the water.
No, they're not, and they have more than enough problems. However, a Sikh charity has been helping out... http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/11007514.VIDEO__Sikh_charity_helping_victims_of_UK_floods/?ref=var_0
Peter Collins wrote (see)
Just seen that, love it
Quite amused by the story about Prince William and the Guardian reporter this morning, although it begs the question, do you really need special clothing to handle sandbags?
You keep plastic bags full of sandbags, Colin? Where do you keep all that lot?
My solution would be, instead of using sand, fill the sandbags (they'd have to be plastic of course) with water and then not only are you protecting your property but you're also using up some of the floodwater at the same time.
You are likely to end up with an unstable barrier using this approach due to the low interface friction between plastic bags.
i blame this goverment
Why?
Dredging seems to be the universal answer that everybody is spouting, which just shows a complete lack of knowledge of the subject. Part of the problem is that there is nothing to hold the water back and it all comes down en masse, something that dredging will only make worse. So it doesn't stop the problem, it just moves it downstream. It also innundates downstream with silt, and can cause increased erosion upstream. The floods we're having how are natures way of de-silting rivers.
And yesterday I heard someone saying that dredging the Thames all the way downstream from Maidenhead was the answer. They obviously haven't noticed the things called weirs that actually control the water level, and so dredging will make absolutely no difference to the capacity of the river, it will just make it's normal state deeper because the weirs sets the level. If the weir is 50 feet above sea level and the river is 10 feet deep, removing 3 feet of silt will just make the river 13 feet deep but still 50 feet above sea level. The only way to get more capacity on the Thames would be to raise the level of the banks all the way to London.
Why not go the whole hog and simply fill in the whole river with concrete.
🙂
If a stretch of river is canalised and banked to protect people in a certain stretch, who suffers most outside that stretch -
All this reminds me of that Doctor Who episode - water always finds a way.
In other words it has to go somewhere - not always where we want it to.
Disagree - unless your gutters are constantly running and the level is controlled it's a different thing.