River Lugg, Herefordshire

76masseyman · Oct 23, 2021

What’s the most likely impact of the clay being removed from the bed to reveal the peat ?
Will the banks collapse more with the flow of water, a bit like when you dig a hole on the beach ?
Or will the water soak back into the peat, and the surrounding land, creating a huge, award winning, wetland habitat that the EA will be mightily proud of.

Henarar · Oct 23, 2021

Wasn't there another thread about this ?

ollie989898 · Oct 23, 2021

76masseyman said:
What’s the most likely impact of the clay being removed from the bed to reveal the peat ?
Will the banks collapse more with the flow of water, a bit like when you dig a hole on the beach ?
Or will the water soak back into the peat, and the surrounding land, creating a huge, award winning, wetland habitat that the EA will be mightily proud of.

You could almost believe it was deliberate.

Surely if the clay liner is removed then the water won't be able to get away and may well begin to scour the bed of the watercourse and over time the course will change and alter.

PB1507 · Oct 23, 2021

An explanation of the situation, copied from the "Stop The Floods" facebook page.

76masseyman · Oct 23, 2021

PB1507 said:
View attachment 993040

Unbelievable.
We are constantly told that sea levels are rising, and I know these channels were to remove water, but surely if maintained to the original capacity, it’s got to help.

carbonfibre farmer · Oct 23, 2021

PB1507 said:
View attachment 993040An explanation of the situation, copied from the "Stop The Floods" facebook page.

A very interesting Facebook page. Lots on there, not just this "digging" exercise but also plenty to do with local towns and villages being flooded due to EA and local council inactivity.

It would be worth a new thread started on this particular EA balls up.

Ramrod · Oct 23, 2021

carbonfibre farmer said:
A very interesting Facebook page. Lots on there, not just this "digging" exercise but also plenty to do with local towns and villages being flooded due to EA and local council inactivity.

It would be worth a new thread started on this particular EA balls up.

See thread - A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Henarar · Oct 23, 2021

76masseyman said:
Unbelievable.

Not really, ask anyone on the Somerset levels, wildlife first people's homes and farmland second

JP1 · Oct 23, 2021

CPF said:
This comes to the mind with EAView attachment 991108

I’m guilty of posting that meme in the past; poor woman has probably not been employed since

ollie989898 · Oct 23, 2021

Henarar said:
Not really, ask anyone on the Somerset levels, wildlife first people's homes and farmland second

The levels were a disaster and I have spoken to several land owners who all said the same thing, basically, since the EA became an entity, no dredging or drainage was done and I mean zero. I suspect they created an entirely new management team and none of them had any experience of it or the levels in general and you had 20 years or more of inactivity.

Exfarmer · Oct 23, 2021

Will 1594 said:
100 ft is distance of river bed and up side of banks
it comes out near us at welney
i will have a word with e a man this week as they cutting banks with robot cutter

I think you will find it should be 100 feet across the bed and 110 feet across the normal water level. Looks about a third of capacity. Have not been that wayfor a long time but seem to remember it was a big wide river then

ollie989898 · Oct 23, 2021

If they have removed the clay liner then water will simply collect and pond in the area rather than being conveyed across the surface to where it originally went?

Exfarmer · Oct 23, 2021

ollie989898 said:
If they have removed the clay liner then water will simply collect and pond in the area rather than being conveyed across the surface to where it originally went?

Ollie, think of it as a ditch which has a stream running through. Now the ditch is on high ground above a field below. The ditch has a clay bottom so the water carries running down the ditch.
However if you made a hole in the clay bottom into a sand underneath, the water then could soak into the sand and escape into the lower the field. At first nothing much would happen as the flow would be low but gradually the sand would be washed away leaving a channel directly from the ditch into the lower field.
The river Great Ouse flows through the 100 foot draining a large part of the south Midlands Some home counties And a big chunk of East Anglia. The water level in the 100 foot is 15 feet above the land surface and if it broke through tens of thousands of acres will be flooded.
There is a bright side though, we will not need to import a lot of people for the veg picking

serf · Oct 23, 2021

Can just see this getting fudged over another white wash ,
global warming to blame blah blah nowt to do with us gov .....

Bald n Grumpy · Oct 23, 2021

Comes to something when those in charge have less common sense than we had in 1651

Two Tone · Oct 23, 2021

Exfarmer said:
Ollie, think of it as a ditch which has a stream running through. Now the ditch is on high ground above a field below. The ditch has a clay bottom so the water carries running down the ditch.
However if you made a hole in the clay bottom into a sand underneath, the water then could soak into the sand and escape into the lower the field. At first nothing much would happen as the flow would be low but gradually the sand would be washed away leaving a channel directly from the ditch into the lower field.
The river Great Ouse flows through the 100 foot draining a large part of the south Midlands Some home counties And a big chunk of East Anglia. The water level in the 100 foot is 15 feet above the land surface and if it broke through tens of thousands of acres will be flooded.
There is a bright side though, we will not need to import a lot of people for the veg picking

Bald n Grumpy said:
Comes to something when those in charge have less common sense than we had in 1651

The River Gt. Ouse has played a large part of my life. I was born in the Fens and spent my early years around Ely. When I was 12, we moved to the other side of Diss. Just to the west of which, is the source of the Little Ouse, which joins the Gt. Ouse near Littleport. I now live about 15 miles to the west of Banbury. The source of the Gt Ouse, starts to the East of Banbury. Goodness knows how much water it carries, before it gets to Earith.

I still find it incredible that the Dutchman, Vermuyden completed the Bedford level from Earith to Denver in 1652, only 3 years after Charles 1st was beheaded.

The Bedford Levels shortcut the Gt. Ouse, by diverting the bulk of its water as it passes the Fens. My Grandfather was the Capt. Mainwearing of Haddenham Home Guard and I well remember him telling the story of how the sluice gates jammed at Earith which they opened by using rather too much explosive! They were not EVEN supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

I also remember both he and my Grandmother telling me of their seeing entire straw stacks floating away across the Fen in 1953 and the very wet harvest of 1959.

During the mid 60’s, we lived between the river Gt. Ouse and Cam at Stretham. The Army turned up with a Dragline to dredge the Ouse from Stretham (Old) Engine (Steam, Beam water wheel pump) to the Fish & Duck, where the two rivers meet and it got stuck for months until a tank recovery vehicle eventually got it out! The Fish and Duck pub, now a boat marina, could often only be reached by boat in the winter then.

All this just shows how important the Bedford Levels are to keeping the Fens drained and how young, inexperienced folks at EA, haven’t got a clue what they are doing. They must regard what our ancestors did is an irrelevance!
Funny how we often regard ourselves cleverer than our ancestors, when we are often clearly not!

ollie989898 · Oct 23, 2021

Exfarmer said:
Ollie, think of it as a ditch which has a stream running through. Now the ditch is on high ground above a field below. The ditch has a clay bottom so the water carries running down the ditch.
However if you made a hole in the clay bottom into a sand underneath, the water then could soak into the sand and escape into the lower the field. At first nothing much would happen as the flow would be low but gradually the sand would be washed away leaving a channel directly from the ditch into the lower field.
The river Great Ouse flows through the 100 foot draining a large part of the south Midlands Some home counties And a big chunk of East Anglia. The water level in the 100 foot is 15 feet above the land surface and if it broke through tens of thousands of acres will be flooded.
There is a bright side though, we will not need to import a lot of people for the veg picking

This is what I thought would be the case. If the water isn't taken along by an impermeable barrier then it will just collect in the land wherever it finds a way out.

More to the point, how do you put this clay layer back?

Bongodog · Oct 23, 2021

You only have to stand on Earith Bridge and look Northward to see how pee poor maintenance has been for many years. The New Bedford used to be a straight flood channel all the way to Denver, now it resembles a slow natural river with reed beds and other vegetation along both banks. The EA obviously think they know more than the people who maintained the channels for the previous 350 years.
It used to be cleaned by dragline few years, now nothing much happens at all.
The removal of the clay liner would not have happened with a dragline, with the bucket lip set correctly the dragline slid over the top of the clay, the pull on the rope counteracting the weight of the bucket pressing downward. The long reach excavator just powers its way through the clay. The driver however should have been watching what was coming out of the water.

PB1507 · Oct 23, 2021

An experienced operator will be able to feel the clay bottom of a lined river and modern day excavator GPS control would make it even easier.The clay liner will be very firm after 300+ years, it would have been puddled when constructed and the weight of the water would continue to compact it.

onthehoof · Oct 23, 2021

76masseyman said:
What’s the most likely impact of the clay being removed from the bed to reveal the peat ?
Will the banks collapse more with the flow of water, a bit like when you dig a hole on the beach ?
Or will the water soak back into the peat, and the surrounding land, creating a huge, award winning, wetland habitat that the EA will be mightily proud of.

Yes something like that

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