While any flood risk should be identified and managed, there will be lots of different options for NRW to manage that risk.  Very often, they will try to go for the cheapest solution, but that will not necessarily be the best.  And they may ignore what is important to a local community.  This is one of the challenges that we must face, and let NRW know what the demands of the community are.

 

If there is evidence of flooding to the properties you have mentioned, that needs to be tested.  There’s nothing wrong with that – that’s a good thing.  But that does not mean that we should avoid testing any assumptions that have been made.

 

One easy solution is to build dams round every single property, but clearly that is not the common sense solution.  Every flood risk will have a unique solution, and a unique environment around it.  It’s about finding the solution that best meets the needs.

 

I do have a time for NRW because they are looking at problems all over Wales, and looking at a map they won’t understand the community.  It takes the community to show them what the challenges might be, where the risks and opportunities might be.  The role of the MP is to bring these people together, exactly as we did in Boverton, to create that momentum that leads to a decision.  If you are an official in NRW, you will want to come up with a solution – I think the community can be part of that solution, and it’s far easier to work with the grain rather than against the grain.

 

It’s really important to take along with us the residents who live in those properties that are at risk of flooding.  It’s about bringing people together rather than dividing different interests.

 

There will be more than one potential solution, so if NRW have regard to history, culture and heritage it may well come up with a different solution to the one that has been put on the table.  And that could mean further upstream, it could be a number of different solutions.  I’m not a hydrologist, but there will be very many different models out there.

 

What we can’t ignore is the area’s history, culture and heritage.  It’s about working sensitively with the environment you are in.  We all want the same thing – a flood free community – but we want to preserve the environment and heritage that goes along with that.  There WILL be a solution that can provide both.