Broads Society response to flooding plan
Below is the Broads Society’s statement in full on Natural England’s proposals to abandon coastal defences and allow the Upper Thurne and its broads to be flooded by the sea.
An online petition on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 10 Downing Street website now numbers more than 1300 signatures.
The Broads Society has been extremely concerned to learn that three of the four options for dealing with coastal erosion being considered by Natural England would, if adopted, lead to 16,000 acres of land around the River Thurne becoming an embayment of the North Sea. It also has considerable reservations about the remaining option under discussion.
Instead, the Society is outlining a fifth option, calling for:
– the Government to provide the Environment Agency with the funding it needs to fulfil its commitment to continue feeding the beach in front of the sea wall between Eccles and Winterton, with sand and shingle
– the Environment Agency to commission a wide-ranging study into ways in which the sea wall there can be strengthened, or otherwise protected, thus ensuring that it remains in a sustainable condition for much longer than is deemed possible at the moment.
Martin George, a committee member of the Society, said: “The area that would be lost under three of the four proposals is an integral part of the Broads, a region that has been afforded the status of a national park, and the Society considers it completely unacceptable to allow part of it to become an open estuary. He continued: “If any of these three proposals were adopted, it would result in:
-The loss of several hundred residential properties.
-The destruction of Hickling Broad, Horsey Mere – a National Trust-owned broad – Heigham Sound and Martham North and South Broads.
-The loss of several thousand acres of farm land, at a time of the growing world-wide food shortages.
-The destruction of valuable and fragile plant and animal life, including: reed and saw-sedge fen, the habitat of the Bittern, Bearded Tit, Marsh Harrier, Swallowtail butterfly no fewer than nine species of moth listed in the Red Data Books as being nationally rare, vulnerable or endangered.
The other option under consideration would involve the creation of a new line of sea defences to the rear of the existing seawall and sand dunes and would minimise the amount of land and property which would have to be surrendered to the sea, as well as safeguard Hickling Broad. This national nature reserve is the largest open water in the region and is much used for tourism and recreation.
But although this option has obvious socio-economic and ecological advantages, the Society has many reservations about it, not least the likelihood that it would prove to be both extremely costly, and intrusive visually in such an open landscape.
In this respect, the Society considers it unfortunate that in drawing up its report, Natural England seems to have made the assumption that it will not be practicable to continue to maintain the integrity of the existing line of defences between Eccles and Winterton.
The Society does not accept that this is necessarily the case.
Dr George added: “We believe that it could well prove less expensive to provide the sea wall which currently fronts this section of coast with additional protection against the scouring effects of the sea than to construct a completely new line of defences to the rear.
We believe that this issue needs to be subject to a full-scale investigation. Such a study should also include an examination of the role currently being played by the nine offshore reefs which were constructed in the vicinity of Sea Palling some 15 to 20 years ago.
We are aware of studies which have demonstrated that the sand spits (‘tombolos’) which have developed behind these reefs are now shutting off the supply of sediment to the coast to the south, and thus increasing the vulnerabilty of the sea wall between Eccles and Winterton to two of the known effects of Climate Change i.e. rising sea levels and an increase in the storminess of the North Sea.”
