17/02/2014
Given that the objective of the policy initiated by the EU, with the eager participation of the Environment Agency and others, was to safeguard wildlife and to increase the availability of habit, it is rather ironic that the
Independent should be
weeping in its cups at the effect of the floods on wildlife.
Collectively, we see the Greens mount their attack on Owen Paterson for his supposed attacks on the environment, but when it comes down to the reality, those self-same Greens, with their amalgam of wishful thinking and misdirected policy, are the ones doing the damage to the environment.
It is they, after all, who have been insisting on constraints on dredging, supposedly to protect the wildlife and habitat that might be damaged by the process. The consequences of not dredging, however, are turning out to be far more damaging than anything that might have been caused by keeping the waterways clear.
From a study, reported by the
Independent, published in the journal
Science of the Total Environment, what comes over id that it is not just the physical effects of the floodwater that does the damage, but the contamination released into the environment by the flooding.
Thus, when Barbara Young advocated that for "instant wildlife", you could "just add water", she was failing to take account of the damaging effect of uncontrolled flooding. Fie on your precautionary principle, let the healing waters cleanse the good land of the slurry pits, silage heaps, cesspits, septic tanks, used oil sumps, diesel tanks, pesticide stores, etc., that farmers tend to leave lying around. What could possibly go wrong?
The reality, of course, is that returning inhabited, working land to a former wetland status often requires expensive and time-consuming preparation. It is neither an easy nor cheap option. Accurately to reflect that reality, Young should have said, "instant water, instant death".
Such is the impoverished nature of policy-making in this country, though, that the last Labour government thought that its 2004 policy of
making space for water could reduce the cost of flood management. The Dutch, on the other hand, with a similar policy called "room for rivers", endowed it with extra funding to the tune of â¬2.2 billion.
Herein lies another irony. While the Left
are bickering over claimed reductions in flood defence spending by the Coalition government, amounting to a few million pounds, they embarked on a policy that should have been funded to the tune of billions, to which no additional funding was allocated.
Launching a sledgehammer to miss the nut, therefore, the Greens are the true despoilers of the environment, while those branded as the environment-hating Right turn out to be the true custodians of nature.
