Tag Archives: environment agency

Put a Dutchman in the Environment Agency

By Bernard Aris | Tue 12th January 2016 - 4:57 pm

The Dutch people has been commiserating with the British people being flooded, yet again, this past year.

Apart from the many times the North Sea inundated the Netherlands (the last time, 1953, inspired the Delta Works – a massive reconstruction and improvement program of our coastal defences, completed in the 1980s), we suffered massive river floodings in the 1990s from the Rhine (and its branch the Waal past the big city of Nijmegen) and Meuse rivers after heavy rainfall in the Ardennes, Alps and other highlands. In 1995 these forced a big evacuation in the heart of the Netherlands. These floodings were the reason for another massive, nationwide programme of restructuring and improving works, including taking account of Climate Change, under the Second Delta Plan commission and a national Delta Commissioner, who is an influential government advisor.

But being a Dutchman who pays attention to floodings elsewhere, I was struck in the past ten years by the frequency that people in Britain involved in, and victims of, those floods complained about two things:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged flooding | 8 Comments

Opinion: Woodland and Water – a success story in Kent with no de-silting and dredging

By Tony Harwood | Sat 9th August 2014 - 8:45 am

Almost 1,000 properties were affected by flooding from rivers across Kent earlier this year. However, against this backdrop there were small glimmers of hope.

A local success story involves the River Len, a small and heavily urbanised tributary of the River Medway in Maidstone. In autumn 2000, under similar rainfall conditions, the Len had flooded commercial and residential property in Maidstone town centre.

In 2002, the acquisition of 2.5 hectares of the River Len corridor was negotiated by Maidstone Council as environmental mitigation for a new supermarket and business park extension. …