Environment Agency should resume dredging

WHILE we learn that much information is available to assist people whose houses are flooded, I would like to suggest that our main river and streams are dredged out to the level they were 20 years ago. Each year, our tidal river gets shallower and shallow

WHILE we learn that much information is available to assist people whose houses are flooded, I would like to suggest that our main river and streams are dredged out to the level they were 20 years ago.

Each year, our tidal river gets shallower and shallower, and the Hundred Foot has banks of week standing for some distance either side.

The Environment Agency will not carry out dredging, as it is stated that dredgings are infected material. In all the years, going back some hundreds, dredging has been carried out without any adverse effect of the dredgings being deposited on the river banks.

This cannot be allowed to go on much longer. Each year, we can expect higher levels and, rather than build up banks to protect places where major flooding occurs, how much more sensible it would be to re-start the dredging that has been carried out for generations. I don't think anyone has suffered from these so-called infected materials, whereas houses have been flooded, sometimes with sewage and silt, which are more lethal than any possibility of the dredgings on the river banks being a problem.

W B CARTER

Meadow Lane

Hemingford Abbots