Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | JANUARY 2015 | 11 Comment L ast month's headlines were dominated by the government's allocation of the annual £2.3BN ood defence budget. The announcement intends to demonstrate that the government is • nally waking up to the fact that our ood defences need serious investment, following a period of neglect, by governments past and present. The massive ood defence budget cuts of 2011 have meant that the government has been dangerously under spending. Clearly the catastrophic ooding last winter has • nally spurred them into action; better late than never I suppose. Whilst £2.3BN may seem like a massive budget, the damage excessive ooding can cause - not to mention the emergency measures necessary to clean up the mess - end up costing far more. It is estimated that the new plans will prevent up to £30BN worth of damage. Suddenly, spending over £2BN from the public purse seems like something of a bargain. Predictably, the South East takes precedence, with hundreds of millions of pounds of the budget being spent on projects in the Home Counties, Greater London and the Thames Estuary. However, perhaps one of the most ba‹ ing aspects of the latest budget announcement is the relatively low amount allocated for the West Country, in particular the Somerset Levels. The Levels will only receive £4.2M of funding each year, despite 600 houses and 17,000 acres of Whose fl ood defence budget is it anyway? The government's belated investment in fl ood defences is welcome, although the way the funding has been allocated to diff erent regions should raise eyebrows farmland being ooded in 2013/14. Images of the destruction in the Somerset Levels were widely publicised throughout the duration of last winter's ooding, and its residents feel rightly aggrieved at the government having seemingly forgotten about their plight. Indeed, even now, a year on, the e" orts to repair the damage caused by the ooding are still ongoing. Of course many would argue that the South East should receive the lion's share of the new ood defence budget as the value of land per acre between Somerset and London is never going to compare. However, cynics have noted that the vast majority of spending seems to be taking place in areas where there are more voters in key seats, a case in point being the highly populated South East versus the more sparsely populated South West. As Labour have commented: "the whole exercise reeks of pork barrel politics in which the Treasury promises to throw money at key marginal seats". With this in mind, if (and when) the Levels should ood again, the government will certainly be up for signi• cant scrutiny. However, the South East isn't exactly happy with its funding either. It is a re ection of just how devastated the Somerset Levels were, that the extensive ooding of parts of Surrey was pushed from the headlines in the winter of 2013/14. Nevertheless Surrey was in fact hit hard by the ooding and as a result local politicians have come under increased pressure to lobby for greater ood defence spending. Their e" orts have yielded an additional £60M for the region as part of the latest funding allocations, bringing their total budget up to £225M. Despite this, residents are aggrieved that this is not enough to pay for a £300M ood channel, which would go a long way towards reducing the risk of future ooding. Local MPs insist that the plans will go ahead, but the public are ba‹ ed as to how the project will be completed when 25% of the necessary funding is conspicuously absent. Another worry is that the government is putting all of its eggs in one basket, by throwing the bulk of its budget at the areas with the highest ood risk. These, of course, do require the most funding, but this doesn't mean that the areas least at risk are completely safe. If rainfall • gures continue to rise at the rate they have been, and funding is not increased, it's not unthinkable that this neglect of lower risk areas could result in oods that could have been prevented with minimal investment. A¢ er acknowledging the dreadful impact of cuts to ood defences, the government is now scrambling to rectify its error with a multi-billion pound investment plan. It's a good start, but it's not enough. They made an error cutting the funding in the • rst place, and it's only right that they should be stumping up the extra cash to • x it. However, one wonders if the public spending bonanza would be happening at all if it weren't for the fact that it was an election year. Cynicism aside, whilst Mr Osborne has the de• cit to be dealing with, failing to invest now will result in a much greater dent in the public co" ers further down the line. A¢ er all, the irresistible force of Mother Nature shows no political bias. SIMON THOMAS MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASSET INTERNATIONAL "A er acknowledging the dreadful impact of cuts to fl ood defences, the government is now scrambling to rectify its error with a multi-billion pound investment plan"

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