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september 200623-09-2006UK: Official opening of largest flood storage scheme in Europe The Alkborough Flats Tidal Defence Scheme has been officially opened on Wednesday 20 September 2006 by Ian Pearson, Environment and Climate Change Minister of the UK. This largest flood storage project in Europe will reduce the risk of flooding for 300,000 people and become a haven for wildfowl and wading birds, according to the UK Environment Agency. The scheme, which will involve breaching the existing flood defences, will help lower high tide levels by allowing water from the estuary to run over the Alkborough Flats to create a massive flood storage area. The total cost of the scheme is about € 15 million, with the funding coming from a wide range of sources including DEFRA, Yorkshire Forward (the Regional Development Agency), the European Union (via the Interreg programme: the FrAme project), English Nature and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The managed re-alignment at Alkborough allows flood water from the Humber estuary to spill out of the river during the highest tides to fill the low lying land. The capacity of the site is so great that the Environment Agency is predicting a 150mm reduction in high tide levels over a large part of the upper estuary. The project will also create a huge new inter-tidal habitat, attracting more species of wildfowl and wading birds to the area including shelduck, wigeon, teal, avocet and redshank. The site is being used as a demonstration project to help promote new approaches to the impacts of sea level rise across Europe. The effects of climate change are expected to increase high tide levels in the Humber Estuary, which, if defences were left as they are, would increase the risk of flooding for the 300,000 people who live in the area. Read more here. Sources: Environment Agency, Bymnews.com, Frame-project  19-09-2006 Dutch national budgets for flood defences tighter than expected On the traditional third tuesday of September, also named 'budget day' (or prinsjesdag in Dutch) the Minister of Finance has presented the overall national budgets for 2007. The Ministry of Transport, Public works and Water management has budgeted € 420 million for flood defences in an attempt to meet the legal safety standards in the coming future. The Ministry's 2007 policy agenda may be downloaded here (in dutch), the budgets for flood defences may be found here. In a response letter to the Dutch parliament, the provinces and waterboards have announced that this amount is insufficient. Earlier, the Inter-provincial consultation board (IPO) have estimated the total costs for dike reinforcements 4 times as high at € 1,6 billion The Dutch waterboards are public organisations with their own seperate local tax system. Among other tasks, they are responsible for the maintenance of the flood defences. Dike reinforcements, however, are the financial responsibility of the National government. Waterboards now claim that the National government is not taking their responsibility. From the perspective of the joint national and local responsibility for safe flood defences negotiations may take place for advance financing by the waterboards. Sources: Waterforum.net Ministry of Transport, Public works and Water management Ministry of Finance National budget 2007  15-09-2006 Massive surge in disappearance of Arctic sea ice The melting of the sea ice in the Arctic, the clearest sign so far of global warming, has taken a sudden and enormous leap forward, in one of the most ominous developments yet in the onset of climate change. Two separate studies by NASA, using different satellite monitoring technologies, both show a great surge in the disappearance of Arctic ice cover in the last two years. One, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, shows that Arctic perennial sea ice, which normally survives the summer melt season and remains year-round, shrank by 14 per cent in just 12 months between 2004 and 2005. The overall decrease in the ice cover was 720,000 km2 - an area almost the size of Turkey, gone in a single year. The other study, from the US Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, shows that the perennial ice melting rate, which has averaged 0.15 percent a year since satellite observations began in 1979, has suddenly accelerated hugely. In the past two winters the rate has increased to six per cent a year - that is, it has got more than 30 times faster. Watch the short video illustrating this. The changes are alarming scientists and environmentalists, because they far exceed the rate at which supercomputer models of climate change predict the Arctic ice will melt under the influence of global warming - which is rapid enough. If climate change is not checked, the Arctic ice will all be gone by 2070, and people will be able to sail to the North Pole. But if these new rates of melting are maintained, the Arctic ice will all be gone decades before that. Read more here and here Source: news.independent.co.uk .jpg) 09-09-2006 BBC News underlines flood threat to the UK Britain's coastline is under growing threat of major flooding with serious consequences, according to environmentalists and other scientists, says BBC news on their website on September 8. After the unusual high tides of last week, the UK Environment Agency had earlier warned of the potential for flooding - but only if there had been bad weather and a storm surge at the same time as the tides. Unusual high spring tides on 9, 10 and 11 September have been accompanied with calm weather. Those expected on 7, 8, 9, and 10 October may still be a potential risk. The astronomical spring tides are calculated to be the highest for the next 20 years in some areas. Illustrative are the number of properties in Weston-super-Mare at risk from coastal flooding has now been estimated at 5,009, not 1,800 as previously thought. Read more here. In an overview map, the BBC news item shows the flood risk areas in England and Wales. Read more here.  |
