Shropshire Star comment: Flooding must be addressed
How swiftly the wheels turn. After the driest May on record, and the continuing coronavirus agony, the devastating floods of earlier this year seem an age ago.
Those who were hit by them will never forget them, and some may never fully recover from their impact.
We can be sure that the weather conditions which led to the floods will happen again, and it’s only a question of when. It could be as early as this autumn.
And we can be sure that if nothing is done, that will bring a return of all the misery the victims endured.
Every community along the path of the River Severn, or close to it, has an interest in ensuring that, so far as possible, the flooding can be countered or controlled.
That’s the reasoning behind Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski setting up an all-party group in Parliament to look at ways of tackling the flooding problems along the river, which rises in Wales, and passes through Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Gloucestershire, gaining in width and strength as it does so, before discharging to the sea.
He has invited 46 MPs whose constituencies either include, or are close to, the river to get on board.
A meeting is also lined up with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the coming weeks, and he will use it to press for more funding for river defences.
It is an interlinked problem. Successful flood barriers which prevent flooding in one place mean more water for the folk downstream. When the barriers in Shropshire initially went up years ago, some people not protected by them started to say they were now getting flooding when they had never been flooded in the past.
Mr Kawczynski wants to see a holistic approach.
Yet we also know that MPs see their role as representing the interests of their own constituents. So while the desirability of MPs along the river speaking as one seems obvious, the unity test will come when they start talking money. Will they resist the temptation to say: “I want it spent in my constituency.”?
