I was very concerned to hear that for short-term money saving reasons the Environment Agency is thinking of cutting back on dredging operations on the Great Ouse. The decision to save money is apparently based on the fact that at the moment only 45 houses are situated in the Haddenham drainage area, so the Agency think it would be all right to allow them to be flooded. I should have thought that after the recent disasters in the Lake District the prospect of any flooding of homes was unacceptable. However, the fen drainage area is very different from the Lake District. We saw appalling floods but within days, the water was gone. This would certainly not be the case here. The fen area suggested as a flood plain is below the river level and would have to be pumped out. The protection for this area is based on earth banks that would be washed away by the flood. The pumps that would need to be used after the banks have been restored would be under 12 feet of water as they are naturally situated at the lowest level. It would take months to rebuild the banks and pump out the millions of gallons of water.

In the meantime not only would the 45 houses be totally uninhabitable and would have to be demolished and rebuilt but thousands of acres of good farming land would be destroyed and this at a time when we are being told there is an increasing need for more food to be produced.

 1947 Floods

However, this is not all. The road and rail system in this area would be under water the A10, the A1123 and the Twenty pence Road would be completely impassable and Haddenham residents would be unable to get to Cambridge to work. The cost of the disruption and the cost of repairing these roads when eventually the water recedes would run into hundreds of millions of pounds.

I therefore think that to increase this possibility of flooding to one in twenty years instead of one in 120 years as at present, would be the height of folly.

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