july 2007

24-07-2007
UK: Severn and Thames rivers threaten to overflow

The flooding crisis in central and western England continues with thousands of homes losing water and electricity supplies.
Up to 350,000 people in Gloucestershire will be left without running water by Monday evening, as the Severn and Thames rivers threaten to overflow.

The Environment Agency claims that water levels on both rivers had exceeded those of devastating floods in 1947. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would set up a review of the crisis. Mr Brown flew by helicopter over Gloucestershire, the worst-affected county, before heading to the police headquarters where the emergency response is being co-ordinated.

The review would look at drainage and flood defences, while extra funding would help pay for essential emergency work in the aftermath of the crisis, Mr Brown said. The Environment Agency said water levels on the River Severn at Gloucester could peak early on Tuesday, while the level of the Thames in Oxford may not peak until early on Wednesday.

Severe flood warnings are in place for the Midlands, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire. At their height, some rivers will be more than 20ft higher than normal.

Environment Agency spokesman Anthony Perry said: "We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before. The benchmark was 1947 and this has already exceeded it."

In March 1947, millions of pounds of damage was caused in the south of England, the Midlands, East Anglia and North Yorkshire when many rivers burst their banks.

Other main developments include:

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn told the House of Commons the emergency was "far from over" and further flooding was "very likely". An independent person would head the flood review announced by the prime minister, he confirmed.
Environment Agency chief executive Baroness Young told the BBC that about £1bn a year was needed to improve flood defences.
The Association of British Insurers has said the total bill for the June and July floods could reach £2bn.
The RAF said it is carrying out its biggest ever peacetime operation, with six Sea King helicopters rescuing up to 120 people.
More than one hundred Royal Navy personnel have been sent to Gloucestershire to help the worst affected areas.
Severn Trent Water warned all residents in Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury - an estimated 350,000 people - would lose their supply by Monday evening due to a treatment works being flooded.

Source: BBC

17-07-2007
NL: no updated safety standards before end 2008
The Dutch parliament needs to wait until end 2008 for a proposal for new flood safety standards. Several parliamentary parties have been urging for a debate about flood risk and feel that it is not giving enough priority. Deputy Minister Huizinga (Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management) has requested the parliament to wait for the results of several ongoing studies.

Standards not adjusted since 1960
The political debate is needed because the safety standards have not been updated since 1960. Since then both the pressure from sea (sea level rise) and from land (socio-economical developments) have increased. The institute for public health and environment has calculated that the value behind the Dutch dikes has increased by a factor of 6 since the sixties. Meanwhile, the first results of project FLORIS (Dutch: VNK) has shown given the insight that there are many more failure mechanisms for dikes, sluices and dunes than can be anticipated in the Dutch flood defence act.

Postponement of further differentiation of standards
Further differentiation of flood safety standards is an important part of the policy development. The Netherlands now knows four different safety standards based on statistical chance that water flows over the defence work: 1:10.000 (South and Central Holland), 1:4000 (Zeeland and Wadden coast), 1:2000 (lower river area) and 1:1250 (upper river area). The idea is to further differentiate these standards per dike ring depending on the socio-economical value of/in the protected area. Research about this is ongoing, also in the FLORIS2 project that recently has been launched.

New economic developments in low-lying polders
The possibility of updated safety standards make it difficult to assess current development projects in low lying areas that are sometimes many metres below sea level. Members of Parliament urged the deputy minister for a plan how to deal with developments in the deep dutch polders.

Source: waterforum.net

02-07-2007
Journey of the rubber duckies
They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so far they have floated halfway around the world.

The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago.

Since then they have travelled 27,000 km floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England.

While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the bath-time fun of thousands of children, their adventures at sea have proved an invaluable aid to science.

The toys have helped researchers to chart the great ocean currents because when they are spotted bobbing on the waves they are much more likely to be reported to the authorities than the floats which scientists normally use.

And because the toys are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, they have been able to survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements.
Boxes of the bathtime toys - made in China for the U.S. firm The First Years Inc - were washed overboard in the eastern Pacific Ocean one stormy January night in 1992 and broke open.

In the intervening time an oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, has devoted his retirement to tracking the little yellow ducks and their friends over 27,000 km, and it is he who has predicted that this summer they will land in the
West of England.

Mr Ebbesmeyer said: 'We're getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard. "It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches.

"Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them."

Mr Ebbesmeyer said the toys will be easy for British beachboardcombers to spot because they have largely faded to white and have the words "The First Years" stamped upon them.

George Bush Snr was still US President when the toys from The First Years Inc. were made in China, packed into a container and put on a ship for the US.

But after falling overboard, the sea water corroded the card-packaging and the toys floated free. They circled the northern Pacific once before being washed up on the Alaskan shore, then all down the West coast of Canada and the US.

Mr Ebbesmeyer saw immediately how valuable the little toys would be to scientific research of the great ocean currents, the engine of the planet's entire climate.

He correctly predicted what many thought was impossible - that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic.

It proved true years later and in 2003, the first "Friendly Floatees" were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada.

So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.

THE JOURNEY SO FAR:

January 10, 1992: Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean nearly 29,000 First Years bath toys, including bright yellow rubber ducks, are spilled from a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean.

November 16, 1992: Caught in the Subpolar Gyre (counter-clockwise ocean current in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Siberia), the ducks take 10 months to begin landing on the shores of Alaska.

Early 1995: The ducks take three years to circle around. East from the drop site to Alaska, then west and south to Japan before turning back north and east passing the original drop site and again landing in North America. Some ducks are even found In Hawaii. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) worked out that the ducks travel approximately 50 per pent faster than the water in the current.

1995 - 2000: Some intrepid ducks escape the Subpolar Gyre and head North, through the Bering Straight and into the frozen waters of the Arctic. Frozen into the ice the ducks travel slowly across the pole, moving ever eastward.

2000: Ducks begin reaching the North Atlantic where they begin to thaw and move Southward. Soon ducks are sighted bobbing in the waves from Maine to Massachusetts.

2001: Ducks are tracked in the area where the Titanic sank.

Second half of 2003: The First Years company offers a $100 savings bond reward for the recovery of wayward ducks from the 1992 spill. To be valid ducks must be sent to the company and must be found in New England, Canada or Iceland. Britain is told to prepare for an invasion of the wayward ducks as well.

2003: A lawyer called Sonali Naik was on holiday in the Hebrides in north-west Scotland when she found a faded green frog on the beach marked with the magic words 'The First Years'. Unaware of the significance of her find she left it on the beach. It was only when she was chatting to other guests at her hotel that she realised what she had seen.

2007: "It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches"

_{Source: Daily Mail}