Dr Evan Harris MP organised a public meeting about flooding (today) at the Guildhall. Representatives of the Environment Agency (EA) gave a presentation, then Dr Harris, and the people in the audience quizzed them.
Last year the Environment Agency had said at an exhibition that the 2007 flood was now thought to be a one in 275 year event, not a one in 100 year event as previously thought, and so large scale flood protection measures for the River Ock (which flooded most of the houses in 2007) could not be justified. They also said there are now 90 houses that could flood (far fewer than previous estimates) one year in a hundred so insurance should be less of a problem for the others.
This meeting was the first chance to publicly question them on this. The one in 275 year predictions come from a £100,000 modelling exercise using the Halcrow river modelling software. When asked to justify these predictions the EA said the model was very complicated and difficult to explain, and involved putting in lots of data, but they are happy to explain it to individuals who have the time.
Halcrow are experts in computer modelling of real world events. Their slogan is “Complex River Systems – No Problem for Halcrow.” But in this case their models do not predict what the non expert on the ground felt was the case . We were also confused by the EA saying a lot of the flooding in 2007 was from ground water ,when it was clearly the River Ock.
