Engineering Solutions

There were only a few comments related to engineering solutions, but these represented some very in-depth conversations:

“Maintaining watercourses, but expensive – can we bring in ££s?
Costing 0.5 million annually to maintain Parrett dredge.”

“Keep investing in dredging the levels.”

Since the 2013/14 floods, in excess of 100km of main river has been dredged or desilted in Somerset, through a combination of Government funding and money raised locally through the Council Tax for Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA).
The SRA has also funded ‘Water Injection Dredging’, a less invasive and less costly form of watercourse maintenance, where a special boat uses powerful jets of water to desilt the bed in times of high water, although this is only suitable for certain types of channel. Find out more about the SRA’s work here.

Where watercourses are open to the sea, significant amounts of silt are deposited on each high tide, so the benefits of dredging are relatively short-lived unless the process is repeated regularly.

“Let farmers dredge the rivers.”

Landowners are responsible for the maintenance of river banks and beds to ensure the passage of water. For some work permits are required, because dredging and other alterations to watercourses can make flood risk worse downstream. There are also environmental considerations and protections to take account of. The Environment Agency trialled a scheme removing requirements for permits but it had no uptake from landowners, suggesting that this may not be the primary obstacle in the maintenance of watercourses.

The UK Government website page, ‘Owning a Watercourse’ sets out the responsibilities of riparian owners.