What happens when you set a river free? | BBC News

[Dave645]

anyone upstream of this, they are trumpeting how its better for those down stream. . .
at a guess our farming budget paid for this as well.

 

[David.]

Unless the river was a man made canal, it must have had a course that it had naturally carved out, surely?

 

[mo!]

Least surprising news ever.

 

[Werzle]

More of a ditch than river by the looks. You couldnt fill a true river in and if you tried you would cause soil pollution on a grand scale. These numpties and there pet projects make me laugh.

 

[Oscar]

I am the neighbour upstream and 100 m of that river in my field
was altered when they did the project .
Funded by some scheme or other and is NT s big idea how they are going to save the world ! They have had heaps of people down to look at it plus a lot of film crews .
What they don't say is that it cost around a million quid to do , wasted 25 acs of arable ground and it's only about 200 m in length!! Thay also fail to say that the EA shut the site down part way through due to the amount of soil and silt running downstream polluting the river ! That was solved initially with 500 t of clean stone being dumped in the river as it exits to create a bung . Some of you may remember I posted pictures at the time and they brought in a long reach excavator( picture in digger thread) . There has been no further news re fines or prosecution but hey it's the N T so no doubt they will get away with it ??
No doubt my fields will be next .

 

[Nithsdale]

They do realise the river will eventually dig itself out - whichever course it takes - as water flows the way of least resistance



What happens then?


Do they interfere again and 'reset' it?... after preaching about undoing human interference

 

[Danllan]

anyone upstream of this, they are trumpeting how its better for those down stream. . .
at a guess our farming budget paid for this as well.

What a crock of utterly unscientific sh!t! It couldn't be a more painfully obvious propaganda piece... As for 'the UK has lost 90% of its wetlands in the last hundred years alone'... this is an appalling choice of words if an honest conveyance of fact was intended.

What should have been stated is that the National Trust - which has a political agenda in this - claims that the UK may have lost up to 90% of its remaining wetlands in the last hundred years.

The vast, vast majority of 'wetlands' were drained long before that, for example the majority of chalkstreams coming into existence as primary channels from the Bronze Age onwards.

Anyway, the river at the bottom of my place has they showed and nobody has interfered with it in living memory.

 

[David.]

There is no doubt that for good or not, watercourses have been straightened in the past.
Thames Conservancy, before NRA time, did ours in the early 70s. Took off some meandering bends and made fields more workable.
The old route must, presumably have held peak flows back a bit; but at the same time, they hadn't paved over 3000ac around Banbury, half of it Cherwell flood plain, back then either.

 

[Ramrod]

Rowland, can’t stand the T wat
F^cking idiots the lot of em

 

[Ffermer Bach]

I am the neighbour upstream and 100 m of that river in my field
was altered when they did the project .
Funded by some scheme or other and is NT s big idea how they are going to save the world ! They have had heaps of people down to look at it plus a lot of film crews .
What they don't say is that it cost around a million quid to do , wasted 25 acs of arable ground and it's only about 200 m in length!! Thay also fail to say that the EA shut the site down part way through due to the amount of soil and silt running downstream polluting the river ! That was solved initially with 500 t of clean stone being dumped in the river as it exits to create a bung . Some of you may remember I posted pictures at the time and they brought in a long reach excavator( picture in digger thread) . There has been no further news re fines or prosecution but hey it's the N T so no doubt they will get away with it ??
No doubt my fields will be next .

surely if we take precedent someone should be jailed (thinking of Kingsland in Herefordshire).

 

[FonterraFarmer]

anyone upstream of this, they are trumpeting how its better for those down stream. . .
at a guess our farming budget paid for this as well.

Will this set a precedent for urban area's too?

 

[Jackov Altraids]

What happens when you set water free?

It creates a river.

Left to it's own devices, I wonder how long it would take for the old course to wash out and re-establish.

 

[topground]

What happens when you set water free?

It creates a river.

Left to it's own devices, I wonder how long it would take for the old course to wash out and re-establish.

Given the amount of rain already this autumn it might have already happened.

 

[Will Blackburn]

What happens when you set water free?

It creates a river.

Left to it's own devices, I wonder how long it would take for the old course to wash out and re-establish.

The point is, the old course isn’t the natural course.

They want to reconnect our river to its flood plain, but they have no plans for it not to remain flowing through the pretty mill infrastructures. Naive to say the least.