Daily Mail
January 30, 2014
Whole villages marooned, possessions and livelihoods destroyed, sewage swilling from overflowing cesspits into kitchens and living rooms…
No, this isn’t some primitive corner of the Third World, stricken by an act of God. This is Britain, 2014 – and the blame for this wholly avoidable disaster lies squarely with human officials who have betrayed those they are paid to serve.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine the misery and squalor endured for almost a month – and, for many, the third year running – by the people of the Somerset Levels, where heartbroken farmers have seen up to 95 per cent of their land 10ft deep in floodwater.
As even the ecomaniacs at the Met Office agree, this has nothing to do with global warming.
It is the result of a deliberate strategy by the Environment Agency, with its peculiarly metropolitan mindset, to put fashionable green causes above the basic needs of rural dwellers.
For as little as £4million, as Christopher Booker today argues, the agency could have averted the floods by dredging local rivers and clearing ditches, following practices pursued since the 17th century, when Dutch settlers drained the Levels.
Instead, it allowed them to silt up – while £31million has been spent on dismantling flood defences a few miles up the coast to turn hundreds of acres of farmland into a bird sanctuary.