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13 Mar 2003 : Column 492—continued
Mr. Hammond: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the anomalous areas is the position of riparian owners? In theory, riparian owners are primarily responsible for the maintenance of all watercourses. In the case of the River Thames, for example, it is clearly impracticable. It is unclear where the boundary lies between rivers on which riparian owners are expected to
discharge their responsibilities and those where it is broadly accepted that they cannot. Would it not be better now to sweep away the responsibilities of riparian owners in respect of all main rivers?
Mr. Key: That is the problem. What is a main river? How do we define when a river is a main river or when it is a watercourse? When is a watercourse a ditch? When does a ditch become a watercourse? Where does a mill leat fall into all of this? There is a real problem here and I urge the Minister to try and sort it out. That sort of detail will help enormously. Above all, if people undertook their riparian ownership duties seriously, it would do a great deal to help.
A different area that concerns me is weather forecasting. I visited the Met Office in Bracknell a couple of weeks ago to learn about the UK weather radar network. It consists of 12 radars owned by a consortium of Government agencies, with the Met Office providing operating support. The radars operate continuously and send back information on rainfall over almost all the UK land area and inshore waters. They measure rainfall rates at five-minute intervals, averaged over three sizes of grid squares. The Met Office can thus feed into its forecasting information about when there will be dangerous flash floods. Such flooding can be accurately anticipated and pinpointed to within a kilometre every five minutes.
That is a huge technological advance and I hope that the Government will continue to expand the network. I know that they want to erect a radome at Dean hill, a prominent hill in my constituency. No doubt the scheme will be controversial, but if it goes ahead the advantages will be enormous. The entire UK weather radar network is of huge benefit to all citizens in alleviating flooding.
Another problem that has not been mentioned is Crown immunity. There are conflicting problems in the villages on Salisbury plain and thereabouts, which are the inevitable consequence of the chalk landscape. In the winter, there is saturation and flooding, while in the summer there is over-abstraction and low flows. I shall explain later why that is important. I have discovered through tabling parliamentary questions that the Ministry of Defence has sunk many boreholes in the Salisbury plain area, yet under Crown immunity, English Nature does not know about them; there is a massive void in its knowledge. However, on a top-secret basis, the Environment Agency has some answers and is allowed to know how much water the MOD is abstracting, although it does not know where the water goes—sewerage patterns in the area are notorious. Twenty-four boreholes are in use by the Army, plus one for emergencies, and substantial quantities of water are abstracted. Crown immunity has gone past its sell-by date in terms of water resources management in the countryside.
The Ministry of Defence is to be congratulated on introducing project Aquatrine, which provides it with water and waste water services throughout the country and seems, for the first time, to have allowed it to count its boreholes. The military's use of water is increasing, however; for example, project Allenby will mean that several thousand more families are housed in and around the chalk areas of south Wiltshire. There will be substantial new abstraction and we shall need careful planning for that.
One of the ironies of the situation is that the Hampshire Avon is one of the cleanest and most beautiful rivers in the country and has been designated a special area of conservation, yet in winter there is emergency dumping of sewage in rivers. This winter that occurred at Hanging Langford. What is the point of going to the trouble and expense of designating a special area of conservation, where there is a river of the highest quality in Europe, if we allow water companies to discharge sewage in that river?
One Monday morning, the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust phoned me to ask for help in dealing with a huge sewage discharge next to the Hanging Langford wildlife reserve. The matter has been pursued by several agencies, but it illustrates the problem. I warmly welcome the SAC strategy, but there are enormous manmade problems that cannot be disaggregated from flooding. Flooding causes substances to enter watercourses that destroy delicate environments, and it is humans who cause the trouble. For example, hormone-disrupting substances—that is, the pill—are one of the greatest problems in the River Avon SAC, and do great damage. They desex the fish and even the flies. The fish cannot live because the flies do not breed. The whole cycle is grotesque. It is our fault that that is happening, and we need to address it.
In the end, we are talking about the use of water, the cost of treating and disposing of water, and our attitude to that. I am concerned that we are obsessed with keeping down the price of water at the cost of the environment. That makes me greener than the greens, I suppose, but I intend to be pretty horrible about the water consumers' body. I was very disappointed to see that the review by the "WaterVoice" newsletter representing water customers, which most Members of Parliament will have had in their post in the past couple of weeks, wants to delay the environmental schemes. It says:
- "We recognise that, because of legislation, there are still environmental schemes that need to be carried out, but we believe there is scope to defer some schemes beyond 2010 in order to reduce the impact on customers' bills."
4.21 pm
David Wright (Telford): My constituency sits in one of the largest inland counties in the country, so it will be no surprise to hon. Members that I do not intend to talk about coastal defence. The one image from my constituency that many hon. Members will know is the great iron bridge that spans the River Severn in the Coalbrookdale area. I want to talk about Ironbridge and the communities around the Ironbridge gorge, and the devastating impact of flooding in that area.
Hon. Members will know the image of the bridge; they will also know the image of the coracle, which is the craft of the upper River Severn. One of the last great makers of the coracle, Eustace Rogers, recently died. He could never tempt me into a coracle. Several friends of
mine who have gone into a coracle have very quickly gone into the River Severn. I do not intend to try that out. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) might do so during the summer months, although he does not know that yet.The Ironbridge gorge is a fantastic sight. It is a world heritage site—indeed, it was the first industrial world heritage site ever to be declared—and it provides an economic engine for the county of Shropshire. Several museums sit alongside the river, including the museum of the river itself and Blists Hill, the museum of iron. In recent years, Shropshire has had serious problems, especially relating to the rural economy. One of the things that has helped it through those troubles has been its ability to draw tourists into the area. The Ironbridge gorge and the iron bridge itself represent a magnet for tourists. Of course, it is also a living community. Some 4,000 people live within the boundaries of the world heritage site and several businesses operate in that locality. It draws people into Shropshire who then go on to visit places such as Shrewsbury, Cosford aerospace museum and other parts of our wonderful county.
Alongside the image of the great iron bridge of which hon. Members will be aware is the image of the significant flooding that has happened in recent years. Flooding is nothing new in the Ironbridge gorge. The greatest flood that took place there was in 1795. I am not sure who the Member of Parliament was at that time; perhaps he paddled a coracle. In terms of recent floods, during the last century there were fairly significant floods in the gorge in the 1940s, the 1960s and throughout the 1990s. The autumn 2000 flood was a one in 50 incidence flood that was quite devastating in the locality. Many of my constituents recall how awful it was and the impact that it had on the museums and local businesses. It took several months—eventually, it may take years—for the gorge to recover all the trade that was lost owing to the many people who stayed away during that period. Some properties in the gorge flood on an annual basis and the geography of the gorge is so problematic that we may never be able to protect them.
The problem is that the River Severn meanders on its floodplain before it reaches Ironbridge, and is then channelled into a steep-sided gorge with no floodplain at all. The rises in water level are dramatic during a flood. Shrewsbury is our main warning that we are going to get flooded. If Shrewsbury gets hit, it is guaranteed that Ironbridge will get hit as well. Experience of floods has prompted the creation of a strong local group to try to draw agencies together. The Ironbridge Gorge Community Against Flooding group is superb. The chair of the group is fantastic and so is the secretary—Jemma McLay-Fortune—who does an enormous amount of work to assist residents and to work with the range of agencies involved. We also have an excellent councillor in the area—Louise Lomax. Other hon. Members have talked about officers from the Environment Agency. Peter May, who works for the agency in the midlands, has been superb. I will return in a few moments to some of the issues that he has raised with the local community.
We have good interagency working. The local authority has worked extremely well with the Environment Agency and DEFRA, but also with
Severn Trent Water, to try to alleviate some of the worst effects of flooding in the Ironbridge gorge. I want to thank the Minister for the commitment that he has given to meet residents from Ironbridge in the next few weeks, and for his commitment this afternoon to fund temporary barriers and measures. I assume that one of the areas that will benefit from that, in relation to the wider Severn catchment area, will be Ironbridge.There is a system in Europe that we hope to pilot, whereby a number of pallets are laid on metal stanchions. We hope to create a burn along areas such as the wharfage in Ironbridge, to alleviate some of the worst effects of flooding. Such a scheme would not stop the one-in-50 style flood of autumn 2000, but it would prevent some of the less severe flooding that frequently occurs in the Ironbridge gorge. As I have said, that could be only a temporary or partial solution to the problem. Many residents in the gorge will still regularly suffer from flooding.
I hope that the Minister will think a little more about support for individuals in the form of defence funding. We had a flood fair in Ironbridge last year but it was not especially well attended. I do not think that residents are aware of the types of product that are on the market to defend their properties. A much stronger push is required on that issue. Some innovative products can be put in place in people's homes. There are blocks that can go over doorways, and ways in which basements can be secured to stop flooding. We have to support local people in purchasing those innovative products, which are produced by many companies in the United Kingdom.
I welcome the fact that the Severn gorge area is a test case. Throughout the catchment area, we are trying to model what happens in floods. Many communities such as Shrewsbury will benefit from more permanent solutions; others, such as Ironbridge, will not. We have to understand the dynamic of the way in which permanent and temporary measures sit together and to understand what will happen during a significant flood. We may find that areas with temporary measures may not be able to cope. They may need more permanent defences.
I would like to touch briefly on the cost-benefit analysis that is being used by DEFRA and the Environment Agency to assess flood risk. I welcome the commitment in recent months to change the cost-benefit analysis. However, I am worried that it continues to downplay the impact that flooding can have on local businesses and specific sites. The Minister has acknowledged that worry. Several months ago, he wrote to me and said:
- "The unique status of the Ironbridge Gorge as a world Heritage Site clearly poses a challenge in both assigning it an economic value and determining how this is accounted for in the cost/benefit analysis."
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