Driest year on record (From Gazette & Herald)

Driest year on record

I'VE just read the letters in the October 29 Gazette & Herald and couldn't believe one of them. J S Gilks talks about the beck at Helmsley being empty and the ducks "sitting high and dry", then says "presumably a farmer had extracted too much water higher up."

Where has J S Gilks been all year? We have had the driest year on record, with virtually no rainfall all summer. We're now into November and it's only just starting to rain - is it any wonder that there's no water in the beck? I am not a farmer, but I know for a fact that there is no water abstracted from the beck above Helmsley.

Borobeck, which normally flows through the town and into the River Rye, rises from a series of springs in Beckdale, only a mile away. I was in Beckdale recently and can assure you that there was only a trickle of water at the head of the beck. Since it flows over very porous limestone, such a small amount quickly soaks away underground. I was a trout farmer for 19 years and know a lot about water abstraction. If anyone had dared to abstract from such a small stream, the Environment Agency would have been on the scene within hours.

It is people like J S Gilks whose unfounded presumptions cause so much trouble to completely innocent people!

Updated: 12:01 Wednesday, November 12, 2003