Water Strategy Seems Vindictive
- October 2004
This Opinion was featured in the October 2004 issue of the the Anglia Farmer
A water management strategy that ignores rising sea levels but targets farmland abstraction is unfair, argues David Walker.
Few farmers, who have had to manage their water use within with abstraction license restrictions, would argue with the need for the management of fresh water resources on a wider scale - even if the purpose is to meet less than well defined dictates of Brussel's Habitats and Wild Birds Directives.
But Broadland Rivers’ Catchment Area Management Strategy(CAMS), currently under development, however, seems in danger of missing a major threat to fresh water resources and associated habitats in the catchment area - as well as upsetting most water users in the process.
Of course, developing a strategy for water use for a catchment area particularly in the context of wild life is a much greater challenge than that for on-farm use. The process of generating data and computer models to provide a basis for this CAMS has been under development for over five years.
While it is probably not too difficult to figure out where surface water comes and goes, the situation is at best obscure underground and this seems to have taken the time.
But what has received little, if any, attention is the twice daily loss of fresh water resulting from the natural action of tides which surely dwarfs all use or abstraction of fresh water in its impact on habitats and wild birds in this particular catchment area.
And the expectation is that this challenge will increase. It was been recognized in the Broads Authority’s 2004 five-year plan which noted a "26-86 cm rise in sea level at Great Yarmouth" can be anticipated over the next 100 years. With the River Yare being only about 100cm above sea level at Norwich, most of the Broads fresh water habitat is in danger of being destroyed by saline intrusion.
Serious damage from saline intrusion over the last few decades, most evident in the loss of fish, has been limited to the winter months, which suggests it has little to do with abstraction. But the frequency and severity of winter surge tide incidents will surely increase with rising sea levels, and no doubt the saline conditions will surreptitiously creep up river destroying fresh water habitats in the process, during all seasons.
It is over 20 years since a barrage or barrier at Yarmouth, which would enable this challenge to be managed, was last considered. Environmental interests opposing the proposed project won that day. Paradoxically, the benefits today would almost certainly relate more to the long term protection of the existing fresh water habitats, rather than "unnatural" economic benefits arising from flood protection and conserving fresh water for abstraction.
And what of the costs? In 1976 it was suggested a barrier and associated work would cost £7.6 million, at a time when Anglia Water was spending £500,000 a year on river bank maintenance. The spend of the current twenty-year Broadland Flood Alleviation Project, designed to restore river banks to their 1995 condition, rather than accommodate higher water levels anticipated, is £130 million.
Today, of course, a barrier would cost many times what was suggested 30 years ago. But money will need to be spent if habitats are to be protected. Reducing abstraction will clearly do little to solve the problem.
Broadland Rivers CAMS development process which focuses on the former and excludes the later is clearly flawed. If the more serious threat to habitats posed by rising sea levels and a solution to this challenge that could enhance future fresh water resources are ignored, the CAMS process surely come to be seen as vindictive.
October 2004
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