Here's a picture of part of the Somerset Levels, taken yesterday from Glastonbury Tor. As you can see, it's not really all that flooded here, but I was particularly interested in the pattern of the fields that are full of water. It approximately follows the old course of the river Brue, before it was straightened and effectively turned into a canal, nearly a thousand years ago.
(The present-day river, mostly hidden behind its raised bank, follows the hedge-line and then the straight line going left to right across the picture beyond the flooded patches).
Of course it's not the river Brue, nor the part of the Levels visible from the Tor, that has been in the news. It's the river Tone and the river Parret, further south nearer to Taunton. And, as even the Prime Minister has stated, the basic reason is to do with climate change. (At least that's what he said at first. Later it was 'climate change, and the lack of dredging').
But I think it's worth remembering what Victor Schauberger said, that straightening out rivers means that they can't carry so much solid matter away, so they become more prone to silting up and flooding.
Schauberger was an Austrian scientist and forester between the wars, and he took a particular interest in rivers and water flow. Flowform arrangements such as the one at Chalice Well are based partly on his thinking:
'Naturally flowing water forms in-winding, longitudinal, clockwise-anti-clockwise alternating spiral vortices down the central axis of the current, which constantly cool and re-cool the water, maintaining it at a healthy temperature and leading to a faster, more laminar, spiral flow.'
According to my dictionary the word 'laminar' has to do with thin layers (as in lamination), and a 'laminar flow' means 'a viscous flow, a fluid flow in which the particles move smoothly without turbulence.'
Schauberger tried to explain all this to Adolf Hitler when he wrote to the German fuehrer in the 1930s, complaining about the dangers involved in straightening out sections of the river Rhine. Hitler took no notice, though the reasoning isn't all so esoteric. As George Mombiot said in his Guardian article last month:
'Many years ago, river managers believed that the best way to prevent floods was to straighten, canalise and dredge rivers ... They increased the rate of flow, meaning that flood waters poured down the rivers and into the nearest towns much faster ... The result, as authorities all over the world now recognise, was catastrophic. In many countries, chastened engineers are now putting snags back into the rivers, reconnecting them to uninhabited land that they can safely flood and allowing them to braid and twist and form oxbow lakes. These features catch the sediment and the tree trunks and rocks which otherwise pile up on urban bridges.'
So if they go dredging like they say they will, next year it may not be Burrowbridge and Muchelney; next year it might be Taunton.
(The present-day river, mostly hidden behind its raised bank, follows the hedge-line and then the straight line going left to right across the picture beyond the flooded patches).
Of course it's not the river Brue, nor the part of the Levels visible from the Tor, that has been in the news. It's the river Tone and the river Parret, further south nearer to Taunton. And, as even the Prime Minister has stated, the basic reason is to do with climate change. (At least that's what he said at first. Later it was 'climate change, and the lack of dredging').
But I think it's worth remembering what Victor Schauberger said, that straightening out rivers means that they can't carry so much solid matter away, so they become more prone to silting up and flooding.
Schauberger was an Austrian scientist and forester between the wars, and he took a particular interest in rivers and water flow. Flowform arrangements such as the one at Chalice Well are based partly on his thinking:
'Naturally flowing water forms in-winding, longitudinal, clockwise-anti-clockwise alternating spiral vortices down the central axis of the current, which constantly cool and re-cool the water, maintaining it at a healthy temperature and leading to a faster, more laminar, spiral flow.'
According to my dictionary the word 'laminar' has to do with thin layers (as in lamination), and a 'laminar flow' means 'a viscous flow, a fluid flow in which the particles move smoothly without turbulence.'
Schauberger tried to explain all this to Adolf Hitler when he wrote to the German fuehrer in the 1930s, complaining about the dangers involved in straightening out sections of the river Rhine. Hitler took no notice, though the reasoning isn't all so esoteric. As George Mombiot said in his Guardian article last month:
'Many years ago, river managers believed that the best way to prevent floods was to straighten, canalise and dredge rivers ... They increased the rate of flow, meaning that flood waters poured down the rivers and into the nearest towns much faster ... The result, as authorities all over the world now recognise, was catastrophic. In many countries, chastened engineers are now putting snags back into the rivers, reconnecting them to uninhabited land that they can safely flood and allowing them to braid and twist and form oxbow lakes. These features catch the sediment and the tree trunks and rocks which otherwise pile up on urban bridges.'
So if they go dredging like they say they will, next year it may not be Burrowbridge and Muchelney; next year it might be Taunton.
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