[ramon]

Today there was  substantial runoff from my neighbours fields, which are heavily grazed and rolled annually.
The farmer is happy for me to dig a trench in the field to divert the water away from my property but otherwise unconcerned. The land was previously rough grazing/heather moorland, which I assume would retain more water.
Are improvements to farmland  contributing to flooding?

[Factotum]

There's so much water about at the moment.

Our farm is on a steep hill and borders onto a peat moorland. Today we have been working to try to cope with the water that's pouring off the moorland onto our fields - the peat is totally saturated and can't hold this amount of water. We have a huge volume of run-off coming onto our pastures.

Our lowest field has a lake in one corner that isn't usually there - formed from the sheer quantity of water coming off the moor. Not ideal, but there's not much we can do about it, except try to channel the water in the direction we would like it to go.

Sue

[Hellybee]

I always find it fascinating how much water a big ol tree takes up, it worries me that more and more are ripped up not only contributing to the water table but also diminishing the stable ground it once held together.


Big ol French drain ??

[Marches Farmer]

As mentioned in an earlier post our stream drains a stand-alone ancient wooded valley and expands from 1 metre wide and 15 cm deep to 5 metres across and 3 metres deep in a day when torrential rain falls on sodden ground.  Trees (please note, George Monbiot) make *** all difference.

[stufe35]

Farmers have been encouraged and indeed subsidised to drain their land since the Second World War on the ever increasing drive for production.  Seems ironic we ended up paying them for set aside.  Any way I digress...every new drain which goes in sends water to the rivers more quickly so that a given rainfall event x will now create a higher peak flow in the rivers downstream of it.

We have being doing this for years the net result being that towns like York which have huge catchments above them suffer ever increasing peak flows. Ie the same amount of water flows down the river following an equivalent rainfall event, it just does it in a shorter time.

In my opinion the time for increasing flood defences in places like York is gone...the solution now lies in holding the water back higher up the catchment....perhaps by paying farmers to remove their drains !

[Marches Farmer]

Let's also remember that the number of asphalt roads, paved pavements, block-paved drives and house roofs drain sraight into the sewer system and thence into rivers.  There has also been a huge amount of building on flood plains.  Anyone moving to River Meadow Drive should beware .....

When the Thames flooded a couple of years ago no-one mentioned that Heathrow airport is something like 9 square miles of tarmac. 

[stufe35]

Oh yes ever increasing paved areas have obviously contributed too.

New developments in flood risk areas now often are given a requirement of retention style drainage arrangements....it should be complulsory on all developments in my view.

If you look at defra website or Google search drainage grants you will see we are still encouraging and subsidising farmers to drain land. Again in my view this should only be with a retention system in place.

We have to reverse 60 odd years of 'progress' to protect cities like york

[JEP]

round here there building on the flood plains.
fields 2 years ago full of water now houses
cheep building land and moves water to next place so that gets twice the amount

[Talana]

Holding the water back may only help when a few hours of rain but when there is days of rain and the land is saturated it runs off the easiest way it can no matter how many trees bog higher up makes no difference once saturated it's saturated. It will only help for a few hours of rain, the water is only gonna stop when it reaches the sea.
It is very difficult to be allowed to clean out ditches, due to sepa don't think of doing it without permission or you be in trouble with sepas spy satellites, farmers currently do not get grants for cleaning ditches draining . With ditches some field drains come out below the water line when it's dry weather they weren't put in like that decades / hundreds of years ago. Lot's of ditches streams are not being maintained properly.
 You can only hold back water in these so called flood defences if they are emptied beforehand. If a farm is left with no drains it will be wet all the time crops and animals suffer if they can survive there and when there is rain there will be even more of water so flood towns more. There is no easy solution to this extreme amounts of rain there will be flooding whatever.If streams and rivers were made deeper and wider in certain places (remember back in time they were maintained by men and spades today diggers and management to limit disturbance of wildlife a lot easier low cost.) that would help and if they would stop building houses next to rivers and so much concrete/ tar everywhere. There is getting less and less farmland /woodland. I wish people would stop blaming farmers and crofters for everything they  know more about nature than some folk, but have to jump through hoops by the powers that be to survive. People in this country seem only want to import their cheap food and everything else which adds to climate change, instead of supporting our own no wonder the country's almost broke.

[stufe35]

Talana,

I should make it clear I am not blaming farmers, I am blaming the system. A lack of understanding of what causes flooding.

The original question was 'are improvements to farmland contributing to flooding ?'  The simple answer is yes. Is it the farmers fault ?...no...they are just doing what they have been encouraged, allowed and paid to do.

The same goes for all development, building roads , houses etc etc.  more water goes to the rivers in a shorter time period meaning the peak flow is higher. Is it the developers fault ?  No they are doing what they have done for years and are still allowed to do.

As an example- I have in the last twelve months erected a new shed on my land, there was nothing more than 1 simple question about what happens to the water off the roof, no check. The reality is it flows into the drains , then a ditch then a river which leads to York.  Nearly Every farmer in this area has put up a new shed recently under a government subsidised scheme (100% subsidy I believe) for muck sheds.  The water off every roof in the area ends up in York but we are some 45 miles away. We have made the problem worse in the last year.  There are still no policies preventing York getting an accelerated flow of water,  I guess that is my point and that is what we need to change.

Increased flooding is the result of inadequate planning (far more than it is the result of increased rainfall)

[Buttermilk]

As York is mentioned by Stufe35 just look downstream for a lot of its problems.  I lived for many years just outside Goole.  Two dredgers were based at Goole and they both went out 5 days a week dredging from Selby to into the River Humber and dumping the dredged silt out into the North sea.  They were doing this to keep shiping channels open and some fair sized ships made it into the port.  Some decent sized ships were also built and launched there too, we had family outings to watch the launches.

Since dredging stopped the ships no longer have the clearance to get to Selby and those that dock in Goole are smaller.  On any day the width of the river is wider at high tide than it used to be and lots more mud is exposed at low tide.  You just have to stand on Boothferry bridge to see this.  The Environment agency responded by building up the river banks to make them higher creating a very nice profit for the farmer who sold them the land and a nice pond in the process which another member on here now owns. I suspect they sold the pond for a lot less than they paid for the agricultural field.

Higher upstream is where the River Derwent joins the river Ouse.  Here there is a barrage used to keep water levels in the Derwent high enough to be navigable for boats at dryer times and to hold back the water to flood the Derwent flood plane to let water from the higher Ouse levels to escape when wet.  I used to be friends with the lock keeper.  His was a 24 hour job and two lived on site.  At the first hint that water was building up in the Derwent they opened the barrier to let it escape regardless of time of night.  The barrier would be shut for rising tides to prevent Derwent waters being taken upstream to York.  Then the powers that be decided it was not the lock keepers position to make such crucial decissions but the order to open the lock had to come from them.  This resulted in no decission being made overnight so there could be 8, or more, hours of backed up water before the order is given, then the tide may be wrong, the moment having been missed, so places like Loftsome Bridge flooded needlessly.  I am not saying that Loftsome Bridge would not flood but it would not have flooded so often as it did or as badly.

Increased housing has not helped matters either.

[sabrina]

We get the run off from the farmers field which is above us. he couldn't give a stuff so my OH put in extra drainage around our place to help. I have rivers for paddocks this morning so ponies still in eating. I worry about colic when the ground is like this. They will get out but only for a few hours. Aberdeenshire is very bad and I feel for those who have had to leave their homes. Keeping drains and rivers clear of rubbish may have helped but with weather like this I doubt it.

[Buttermilk]

No keeping things clear would not prevent flooding due to severe weather but it would help things to drain away quicker.  This also means that the upland areas will be able to act as a sponge again as the water drains out.  If the uplands are wet and boggy before the heavy rain there is even more immediate runoff instead of the slower release from the soil.

Think a bath if it is full to the overflow before the taps are turned on full the level will rise and spill from the top of the bath, however if the bath is empty or only half full then there is capacity before the overflow is reached and time before the top spills over.  Those advocating beavers want the uplands to be near the overflow before any rainfall starts.

[Llandovery Lass]

The land above our land is unimproved woodland and grazing. Currently water is pouring off it and down what normally are our driest fields, the land is saturated and has been for some weeks. Our bottom meadows are worse and are under water a lot of the time. I find it difficult to blame anything other than the large amount of rain.

I remember in the late fifties, early sixties, fencing in the common land and reclaiming it. Yes my father drained the bogs, ploughed,  reseeded and generally tried to improve the land. This was at around 1000-1200 ft and we had previously had hill rights on the land. I don't think that it caused that much damage, we still had grouse and curlews and plenty of hares. Perhaps acres of arable land are more likely to cause runoff but at this moment in time it is going to run off anything.

[harmony]

The one thing we can say for certain is that in exceptional weather we will get exceptional consequences. I don't think we can blame it on just one thing but a mixture of things. Equally, one single thing won't be the answer.


What we can't do is say well it won't happen again for several decades so we we can ignore it for now.