River Lugg, Herefordshire

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onthehoof

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cambs
Or just let landowners do it rotationally, as cheap as they can and be done with it. Loads of farms own diggers and are quite capable of digging out dirt and putting it on the bank.
But we would need an Environmental permit for every metre of work done and every item removed!
After what Mr Price and Mr Rackham have just gone through would you want to do it??
 

Werzle

Member
Location
Midlands
Yes agree blockages need to be removed. Mr. Price was given verbal permission to unblock one river arch and remove the silt build-up immediately upstream from this caused by the blocked arch. No other action was identified during the meeting with the EA and PC. The immediate area is not subject to 'extraordinary' flooding and as another poster has pointed out, the village of Kingsland is an a Zone 1 area (low risk of flooding) so his reasons for doing this are only know to himself.
The EA are more than happy for riparian owners to carry out river work as long as it has been assessed and authorised. However Mr. Price decided to crack on with works over 1.5km of river that he knew were not authorised.
As for rivers becoming stagnant swamps, a lot of this can be attributed to silt build-up caused by low flow and land run-off.
Low flow can be attributed to abstraction in some areas and run-off due to (holds-breath!) bad/changing farming practices, cattle poaching etc.
I agree on some points, abstraction during droughts is criminal imo as is ploughing or building on or near floodplain. Cattle poaching would hardly register (although the vegan types try to promote the notion) and animals have drunk from rivers before man set foot on the earth.
 
I agree on some points, abstraction during droughts is criminal imo as is ploughing or building on or near floodplain. Cattle poaching would hardly register (although the vegan types try to promote the notion) and animals have drunk from rivers before man set foot on the earth.

Allowing cattle to drink from watercourses is not that popular these days, not least because of TB and the fact the sometimes get stranded in the river. Easier to electric fence it all off.
 

onthehoof

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cambs
But we would need an Environmental permit for every metre of work done and every item removed!
After what Mr Price and Mr Rackham have just gone through would you want to do it??
And besides I already pay the EA to do it!
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lloyd

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Allowing cattle to drink from watercourses is not that popular these days, not least because of TB and the fact the sometimes get stranded in the river. Easier to electric fence it all off.
Or import beef from countries that dont give a sh*t and take the moral high ground, whilst closing UK farming down creating one big theme park.
What on earth could go wrong.:unsure:
 

arcobob

Member
Location
Norfolk
OK, but just one small point.....the " good old fashioned water meadows that got destroyed " were ploughed up and cropped during and post WW2 because the nation was starving. Something I doubt you, your family , Monbiot, Packham and others of that ilk have ever experienced.
Large areas of black fen were drained and ploughed up in Norfolk and Cambs by the WARAG. With the exception of small areas they had never beeen cultivated befoe. They never were allowed to re-wild, with the exception of small sanctuaries and the peat has largely oxidised and disappeared.
An old farmer friend in the Methwold area told me haw, as a young lad . He travelled by horse and wagon with his parents and their belongins to farm this land. He slept for much of the journey and when they arrived he awoke in the midst of what he described as a wilderness The land soon fell under the plough and the biggest problem were the semi fossilised bog oaks which lay below the surface. This problem got worse for a number of years because, as the land dried out the peat oxidised and shrank and more oaks emerged year by year.
In 1969 I surveyed a large area of this fen to determine the levels of carrot fly infestation. The ditches were 8 to 10 feet deep and the depth of peat was clearly visible at at least 6 feet in many places. Those ditches are now scarcely 4 feet deep and the peat is seldom more than a foot.
Who is to say that, under the circumstances, this should not have happened but it is certain that the original landscape will never revert in many thousands, if not millions of years. In well under 100 years this heritage was lost forever, largely because of a lack of food security. at the outbreak of war. This situation now exists with energy and perhaps may again do so with food and manufactured goods.
While much of the world is governed by dictators from whom we obtain essential needs it is a sure fact that we must not become complacent.
 
But we would need an Environmental permit for every metre of work done and every item removed!
After what Mr Price and Mr Rackham have just gone through would you want to do it??
On the levels the IDB are the ones landowners liaise with when planning out any maintenance works. I used to know one of the people instrumental in setting that particular IDB up. They are a pragmatic bunch by all accounts.
 

arcobob

Member
Location
Norfolk
We have reached a point where in fact nobody has to clear the drain.
It is an Award watercourse so not Riparian owners, it used to be District Council but they transfered it to the predecessors of the EA, so the EA are responsible for its maintenance but don't actually have to do anything, and yet I have to pay the EA nearly £600/year for Maintainance, meanwhile everyone gets flooded
Norfolk is exactly the same in parts. Fallen trees do not in the first instant cause major flooding until the crap that people chuck in the river get caught up in it and the silt builds up.
 

arcobob

Member
Location
Norfolk
On the levels the IDB are the ones landowners liaise with when planning out any maintenance works. I used to know one of the people instrumental in setting that particular IDB up. They are a pragmatic bunch by all accounts.
Farmers and landowners are not the only ones affected but private individuals who do not pay water rates. A drain which flows under my land but does not gather water from my plot, drains a large corner of the village. the drain then runs about 150 yards under another field and then out into the river. For much of winter 20/21 the top of the drain outfall was up to two feet under water and five meters downstream was a fallen tree. That tree is still present and so is the silt build up. Years ago when the river received annual light maintenance the winter rain flushed away any minor obstructions but now it is a job for a sizeable machine employed at great expense and, in the short term at least, highly destructive.
Our drainage board hides behind the fact that the greens don`t like dredging but the reality is that they won`t spend money and their employees don`t do physical work.. In the past our local small river was maintained by two men making an annual pass with muck rakes and forks. They could cover anything up to two miles in a day. There were no 360 diggers and I never saw a dragline working there.
 
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Werzle

Member
Location
Midlands
Do you really want your cattle drinking water from upstream, around here the TB angle and whatever else puts paid to that.
Tb risk in river water wouldnt be high on farmers worries, lepto in brooks maybe. Tbh alot of farmers would and do fence off rivers etc and many more would if the debris was cleared first so that the fence wouldnt get ruined and washed away by every flood . Electric fences along rivers annoy anglers and get pinched by yobs/poachers. All thats needed is a commonsense approach and abit of give and take and not ideological ideas from people with no hands on experience.......who have jobs in the EA and the like
 
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ajcc

Member
Livestock Farmer
Or to bring some facts into the conversation to counter the opinions that 'Mr. Price is a farmer and therefor must have done the right thing...'

Let's just run over the FACTS again:-

  1. Mr. Price, the EA and Kingsland Parish Council held a joint meeting where it was agreed by all parties that Mr. Price could unblock a river arch and carryout silt removal and bank reporfiling immediately upstream of said river arch
  2. Mr. Price proceeded to carry out bank reprofiling, channel straightening and deepening and removal of bankside vegetation, trees etc. over a length of 1.5km (not 'immediately upstream' as had been agreed). It should be noted that no official permits or agreements were in place to consent these works.
  3. The site is an SSSI (the assumption being that Mr. Price would have known this and therefore been aware of additional permits and agreements required to carry out any works)
  4. Mr. Price was in possession of a tree filing license. The Forestry Commission did not bring a case against him.
  5. Mr. Price used a bulldozer over some lengths of the river which destroyed the river substrate
  6. Mr. Price subsequently carried out more works approximately a year later despite having being issued with a Stop Notice by a Court
  7. Mr. Price was convicted and fined £10,000 in 2007 for unauthorised waterways works
  8. Mr. Price has pleaded guilty to all charges.
Now feel free to pile in with any opinions you like, but the above is a matter of record and cannot be argued against.
Mr Price has pleaded guilty to breaching a stop notice.
NE not a court issue stop notices.
That SN will have an accompanying explanatory document.
That document may well be full of half truths and misconceived opinions and unsubstantiated gobbledygook that NE has dreamed up.
The SN has a right of appeal at Defra. But Defra struggle with appeals. Their appeal system is dysfunctional. More than likely the appeal is outstanding.
But Mr. Price committed the breach offence despite the fact that the SN may be yet prove unlawful in its issue!
Now this is supposition but the facts may not be as clear cut as NE would like the world to believe.....NE does have history in this sort of thing....just saying
 
Having read your post you do have to ask the question why the EA are not carrying out more of the essential works themselves .
Is It lack of money ?Is it because they are scared of confrontation with wildlife groups?Bad management of resources ?Or something else ?
Edit
Still waiting for Vlad or is it a case of he feels helpless to reply.🤷‍♂️
The EA are chronically underfunded and also caught in a cleft-stick between groups lobbying for more flood defence (who largely don't have a clue about flood defence) and environmental groups (who again largely don't have a clue either).
Both groups shout pretty loudly and because all any government cares about is winning votes, whoever is getting the most public sympathy normally wins, regardless of if what is being proposed is a good idea or not.
 

arcobob

Member
Location
Norfolk
Paying a statutory levy and getting nothing for it but hassle seems to be a theme in agriculture....
As a farmer friend who farms 2000 arable acres of desert with no drains, no ditches and no river says it is a land tax. In reality it pays for draining the fenland which could never sustain the cost without help.
 
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