My wet city this morning.

[Scot Dutchy]

I never understand why the British never ask the experts. The Americans finally did. The Dutch engineers are now making New York safe after New Orleans.
The British cant build water defences.

[Rum]

Well this was a river system flooding, not the sea. I've seen what the Dutch do and its impressive but it is a different scenario. It is hard to see what could have been done to combat a month's worth of rain in 24 hours.

[Brian Peacock]

... on top of the rain we've already had.

[cronus]

That's fresh water. You can't figure a means to channel it into a reservoir, despite all those gullies and the yearly predictable nature of the flooding? I'm not saying it'd be easy but with modern 3d terrain modelling not that hard either.

[Scot Dutchy]

Well this was a river system flooding, not the sea. I've seen what the Dutch do and its impressive but it is a different scenario. It is hard to see what could have been done to combat a month's worth of rain in 24 hours.

We have both problems. We have the four big rivers coming in from the east which present a serious problem. The idea of channelling is not practised any more. It is more a case of high river dykes and flood plains. New catchment areas have been built which are designed to be able to handle the worst 1 in 250 year flood. It costs a lot of money far more than was paid to protect Carlisle. Building concrete walls is a waste of time.

[mistermack]

Well this was a river system flooding, not the sea. I've seen what the Dutch do and its impressive but it is a different scenario. It is hard to see what could have been done to combat a month's worth of rain in 24 hours.

What I would do is to create dams in the steep valleys above the cities.
Flood the valleys and generate hydro-electric power. Then, when you have a weather forecast like we had last week, release the stored water in a measured way, so that the valley reservoir is empty, and ready to take the storm water.
It could be that the electricity generated by the system would go a long way to paying for the flood prevention aspect.
The initial costs would be fairly massive, but you could finance it against future income projections.

Now that the weather forecasts are so accurate, it could be an effective way of holding back the floods.

[Brian Peacock]

I'd just dig a big hole.

[Rum]

In actual fact the major factor here is sheep farming. The steep mountains of the lake District to the south of here have been artificially maintained as 'traditional' sheep farming country, which is has been for several hundred years. The hill farms are actually subsidised and it is what the tourists (5 million a year) expect to see, along with the dry stone walls, denuded landscapes and the rest of it. The natural landscape, if allowed to revert, would be forest. If they re-forested the whole area that would probably be all that is needed as it would slow the release of the water, which currently rushes down to the short rivers which flow through our city. As Scot says, building concrete walls, which is more or less what they have done, kind of misses the point.

However they are not going to re-forest the Lake District any time soon, so they will have to rethink it.

[Strontium Dog]

So in other words, it's all the fault of the meat industry

[Brian Peacock]

Bloody woolly buggers selfishly driving people from their homes. Why I've a mind to boycott tweed for a year over this.

[JimC]

Bloody woolly buggers selfishly driving people from their homes. Why I've a mind to boycott tweed for a year over this.

Sheep? Fuck 'em!

[Scot Dutchy]

Remember your Wellies.

[mistermack]

Apart from re-growing forests all over Cumbria, or extensive landscaping, there's not much that will hold back such an extreme volume of water.

My solution has always been the opposite of what the governments have done. Instead of compelling the insurance companies to keep insuring people in places where flood is a risk, set the insurance industry free from interference.
Why should people who live on a hill subsidise people who live on a flood-plain?

If people couldn't get flood insurance for the worst places, we would all pay less for house insurance.
And those worst affected areas would be cheap to buy a house in. But the flood risk should have to be accepted by the buyers.
Then people would sort themselves out. You can adapt a house to the risk of flooding, and people would do that, if they knew that they had no flood insurance.

[Rum]

Um..insurers are refusing insurance to some people in the flood zone.

[mistermack]

Um..insurers are refusing insurance to some people in the flood zone.

Maybe, but that would be the exception. I remember it from the previous bad floods, in Gloucester, my town.
The politicians threatened to bring in legislation, to force the insurance companies to cover people on the flood plains, if they didn't keep offering cover. In the end, the industry came to an arrangement to keep offering cover.
Obviously, there was some leeway in the agreement, for refusing some of the very worst flood risks, and some movement on premiums.
But they can't do what they want. It's not a free market. They are offering cover where they wouldn't, and at premiums that they wouldn't. And they make up the losses by charging everyone else more.

I'm just saying that the market should be absolutely free.
At the moment, some people are getting big insurance payouts every five or ten years when in the real world, they wouldn't have been offered cover at all.