Never mind the science - we are politicians

Citation

Wilson, H.C. (2007), "Never mind the science - we are politicians", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 16 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2007.07316eaa.001

Never mind the science - we are politicians

Over the past couple of months the UK has had some atrocious summer weather, even for this country. It has been abysmal, with torrential rain, hail, high winds, thunder and lightning storms: you name it – then we have had it in train loads.

Localised flooding is not new in the British Isles, but usually it has been confined to the winter months and mainly affecting small rural communities built along the river banks. The scenario has slowly changed over the past 20-30 years to more incidents of flooding in the late spring and early summer affecting large conurbations. This has been the scenario over the past few months, with large areas of towns and cities being inundated with flood waters. The UK’s emergency services have responded magnificently to the recent crisis, with regional fire services dispatching pumping tenders and associated staff across national and regional boundaries as soon as requested, leaving the economics out of the picture until the emergency is over.

The other major problem affecting the UK at present is the housing situation, whereby young families have been priced out of the housing market and there is now an acute shortage of low cost, affordable housing. (Not a good way to get yourself re-elected.) Local and regional councils are severely strapped for cash and cannot finance the building of such homes, so home building has been left to the private sector to fulfil the need, but in many major towns and cities their response has been to build apartment blocks but at a selling price that young couples with families could not envisage the repayment costs. This has quickly become a national scandal.

To prevent inundation on a scale such as we have recently encountered, scientists, both university- and government-employed, have made it abundantly clear that the problem is that too much of the floodplain areas have been built upon, and that inner city brown-field sites have not been returned to the green-field quota. In other words – too much concrete and not enough grass. In grassed areas the rain is absorbed into the soil and is slowly released into the water table, whereas in built up and concreted areas the water runs off into the storm drains. The problem with the storm drains in the UK is that the majority of these were built during the reign of Queen Victoria and were never designed to handle the run-off that now occurs in the large towns and cities which, on average, now house five to eight times the population and cover an area of similar increase. The sewerage and storm water systems are now in the hands of private water companies with shareholders to satisfy, so profitability is their key priority. These companies have difficulty maintaining the drinking water supply without losing 30 per cent of the treated water through leakage from their pipes between the treatment plants and our homes. Also, in many areas the storm water system is mainly controlled by the local or regional councils, who are cash poor and cannot afford to keep the road drainage system free from debris and litter.

The response of the UK Government to the housing crisis is to release more dedicated green-field sites for low-cost housing projects; to adjust the planning system governing the building of homes on inner-city brown-field sites so that it is easier to obtain; and to encourage local councils to allow building on an “in-fill” basis (in other words, to increase the population of the inner city areas with the building of homes on any available inner city green area such as parks and recreational areas, as well as large gardens).

So, Mr Brown, any ideas where we can send the water that is currently invading the tens of thousands of homes in the UK?

H.C. Wilson