Mark Parish Council - ENVIRONMENT AGENCY and SOMERSET RIVERS AUTHORITY

SOMERSET RIVERS AUTHORITY

Press Release - 13th April 2021

SRA PARTNERS WORK TO REDUCE SOMERSET FLOOD RISKS

Somerset Rivers Authority is to spend £3.44 million on 21 projects giving Somerset residents greater flood protection and resilience.

Towns, villages and rural river catchments across Somerset, from Dulverton in the west to Beckington in the east, will benefit from the SRA’s 2021-22 Enhanced Programme of works.

The programme includes new investments in major schemes to reduce flood risks from rivers, reinforced by a significant number of measures to help slow the flow of water down through catchments.

SRA partners will also tackle road flooding problems, develop urban action plans and support local communities and businesses

The money comes from three sources:

• £2.66 million of the 2021-22 council tax raised for the SRA by Somerset County Council and Mendip, Sedgemoor, Somerset West and Taunton, and South Somerset district councils:

• £20,000 contributed by the Axe Brue and Parrett Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs);

• and £780,000 moved especially from the SRA’s contingency fund to allow more projects to proceed.

The SRA’s share of the council tax charge has not increased since 2016, when it was introduced. The SRA’s local funding has so far enabled Somerset to benefit from an extra 199 schemes and activities designed to reduce the severity and impact of all types of flooding.

Cllr David Hall, Chair of Somerset Rivers Authority, said: “Different parts of Somerset have different challenges with flooding, so we need to tackle those challenges in appropriate ways, and bring people together to achieve the best results.

“Our new Enhanced Programme gets more partners than ever before working together on a range of SRA-funded activities. For example, around Shepton Mallet and Croscombe, where flooding occurred last October, we’re going to be looking in great detail at the entire River Sheppey catchment to try to address what needs to be done there to help protect people’s homes and businesses.

“I’m hugely proud of the work of the SRA. It’s a great example of real partnership working in action.”

The main partners in Somerset Rivers Authority are the county council and the four district councils, the two IDBs, the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Wessex Regional Flood & Coastal Committee.

Other bodies involved with the SRA’s 2021-22 Enhanced Programme include the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group SouthWest, Wessex Water, the National Trust, the Beaver Trust, Exeter University, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Westcountry Rivers Trust, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, town and parish councils, flood groups, moor associations, local societies, farmers and businesses.

All SRA activities are designed to deliver the objectives of Somerset’s 20 Year Flood Action Plan, which was drawn up during the devastating floods of 2014.

The 2021-22 Enhanced Programme therefore includes contributions to the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier project, led by the Environment Agency and Sedgemoor District Council, and to the SRA’s own River Sowy-King’s Sedgemoor Drain Enhancements Scheme, as these two initiatives will help to protect thousands of homes and businesses.

In addition the SRA is part-funding the design of a 125-hectare floodplain restoration scheme in the upper catchment of the River Aller in West Somerset, which will help the National Trust to reduce flood risks for nearly 100 properties downstream in places such as Allerford and Bossington.

Places to benefit from drainage improvements will include part of the busy A358 near Combe Florey, Creech St Michael near Taunton, and Beckington near Frome. Work in Beckington follows a major SRA-funded investigation into almost every aspect of flooding and foul sewer problems around the village.

New studies in 2021-22 will focus on Dulverton’s damaged Weir and Leat, the whole of Minehead, and the large part of Burnham-on-Sea that feeds into the lakes at Apex Leisure & Wildlife Park and Haven Holiday Park.

The SRA is also part-funding the development of a Somerset Beaver Strategy, because while beavers’ activities can help to reduce flood risks and bring many benefits, in some places and situations they can have undesirable consequences. The SRA’s aim is that people on all sides of the debate about beavers should be well-informed, so that evidence-based and science-led decisions can be taken about possible courses of action, and suitable planning and management agreed.

Some parts of the 2021-22 Enhanced Programme will take more than a year to design and deliver. More information can be found in the Flood Risk Work section of the Somerset Rivers Authority website: Somerset Rivers Authority Enhanced Programme 2021-22 - Somerset Rivers Authority

Detailed PDF about SRA Enhanced Programm[...]
Adobe Acrobat document [157.0 KB]

ENVIRONMENT AGENCY

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Environment Agency community flood risk management update Wessex

August 2015

Welcome to the Environment Agency's community update. If there is a subject of particular interest to you that we've not included, please let us know and we'll update you next time. Here are some current topics of interest.

Flood Warden training - the first in Somerset
Routine river maintenance in Somerset
Completed computer modelling reconfirms benefits of dredging and additional pumping

Somerset Community Open Day
Ring banks

Flood Warden training - the first in Somerset

Flood wardens from Moorland and Fordgate have been the first in Somerset to receive flood warden training. The Environment Agency and the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue service delivered training modules on 'understanding flood risk', 'role profiles', 'emergency response' and 'risk awareness' that were developed by the Cornwall Community Flood Forum.

The Cornwall Community Flood Forum has developed the Community Resilience Toolkit, which supports communities to prepare, respond and recover from flood events. The toolkit has been developed with support from communities, volunteers, businesses, the Environment Agency and the Fire Service. The purpose of the guidance series is to help volunteers to act safely while providing the best level of support to their community during an emergency, such as flooding.

We will be continuing to deliver this training to communities across Somerset over the next 2 months. Some of the communities attending include Burrowbridge, Oath, Aller, Williton, Roadwater and Porlock.

We are continuing to work with Somerset County Council assisting the communities across the Somerset Levels & Moors to develop flood plans. The plans set out the course of action for the flood wardens before, during and after a flood.

R Routine river maintenance in Somerset outine river maintenance in Somerset

The Somerset field teams respond when there is a flooding or pollution incident, but this isn't the whole story. Our 'day job' is to check and maintain Environment Agency assets - flood protection/defence structures, for example pumping stations, mechanisms such as flaps, and river banks. We also maintain rivers on a prioritised basis.

Our largest structures are the banks of our main rivers. During summer months we maintain these banks, removing vegetation with excavators or improving water flows (known as conveyance) by using weed-cutting boats. In winter months we hand cut the banks of streams in urban locations. If we don't cut the vegetation, it can cause the banks to become unstable during high river flows. In total we spend nearly £3.5m each year maintaining 874 km of river banks in Somerset.

We also carry out small scale civil engineering works, such as the new penning door on the River Sheppy at Lower Godney.

Find out more here

Completed computer modelling reconfirms benefits of dredging and additional pumping

In addition to the weed cutting and river bank maintenance done to keep channels flowing freely, we also use dredging in locations where it makes an effective contribution to reducing flood risk.

To fully understand the benefits of dredging and additional temporary pumping on the Somerset Levels and Moors, we have carried out computer modelling. The modelling shows that dredging work combined with the use of temporary pumps will help to reduce flood risk for this part of the Somerset Levels in the event of an extreme flood, like that experienced in 13/14 which was the wettest winter on record. It also demonstrates the real benefits for local residents of the extra investment made by the Government in reducing flood risk in this area.

The modelling results have been shared with Somerset Rivers Authority partners to help inform future flood risk work. You can download a briefing note here

Somerset Community Open Day

Following a very busy period recovering from the wettest winter on record, we decided the time was right to show local people the work we have achieved in Somerset to reduce flood risk to local communities on the Somerset Levels and Moors. We thought it would also help us continue to get to meet and understand the views of local people and for us to highlight the wide breadth of our work to make Somerset a better place for people and wildlife – after all we do so much more than managing flooding risk.

On Saturday 4 July 2015 we opened our doors to some of our iconic sites across Somerset.

More than 230 people visited us on the day at various locations – with the most popular attractions being our Bradney Depot and Northmoor and Currymoor pumping stations.

Bradney depot was our hub for the day, and we took the opportunity to display some of our kit ranging from robo flails to excavators and pumps.

Members of our Fisheries, Hydrometry and Telemetry, Sampling and Flood Mapping teams were available to explain other work we do to protect the environment.

We teamed up with partner organisations including the Internal Drainage Board, RSPB, Hawk and Owl Trust, Somerset Wildlife Trust and Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group. From Bradney we hosted a mini bus tour around the Area.

Our satellite locations were Currymoor, Northmoor, Gold Corner, Huish Episcopi and West Sedgemoor pumping stations and our Area Incident Room in Bridgwater.

We'd like to say thank you to all of you that came along, we hope you enjoyed it. If you have any enquires or feedback, please feel free to let us know. Following on from the feedback we have already received we hope to hold another event in the future.

Ring banks

Earlier this year, the Environment Agency on behalf of the Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA), undertook a desk based assessment to identify potential locations which could benefit from permanent ring bank protection if funding and the opportunity arose. The most feasible sites for ring bank defences were identified as Chadmead, Fordgate and Moorland. Before carrying out any further detailed appraisal we need to understand if there is strong support for this within the community.

We recently held a public consultation with residents from the 3 locations to gather their views and are currently collating the responses. A summary of the responses for each location will be produced and made available soon.

If you have any questions about the above articles or any Environment Agency led work please contact us at enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk

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