Check those flood facts

11:45am Thursday 8th May 2008

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It is sad that Coun Keal has to descend to the lowest level of insult instead of looking at the facts and the evidence - particularly when he was the only Liberal Democrat to vote against my motion on flooding, and the others failed to support him, even though he is their leader.

When it comes to flooding in the countryside, Coun Keal has always had his head buried in the sand. He says I am taking a flight of fancy, when my article quoted extracts taken from official letters including one signed by the chief executive of the Environment Agency clearly admitting that: "maintenance work in rural areas has reduced over the last 20 years as we focus our attention on protecting people and property".

Coun Keal will never accept that "people and property", as defined by the Environment Agency, has a different meaning to the one he chooses to give it. The people and property the Environment Agency will protect are those in urban areas. When asked about defending villages, the Environment Agency replied: "Where a large area of floodplain has historically been defended from flooding, it would be unsustainable to continue. Localised defences may be considered to defend areas behind current assets.

Benefits and costs associated with this would have to be identified carefully."

In other words, the more houses protected, the greater the cost benefit and the more likely that defences will be built or retained - a situation in which many (if not all) villages in the Vale will lose out to the towns. Incidentally, this is not just my opinion: it is one which I share with the Drainage Boards, and they ought to know more about these things than Coun Keal.

When Coun Keal writes so glibly about the benefits of water meadows and of "allowing land to flood where it naturally has done in the past", his insensitivity shows just how little he understands the very real fears of people who live in the rural areas. It also shows just how little he knows about how little maintenance work on flood banks is currently being undertaken by the Environment Agency.

Coun Keal may think it's clever to write letters to newspapers casually abusing people he disagrees with, but in this case he demeans himself in the eyes of everybody.

COUN PAUL ANDREWS, Great Habton

• I, too, was disappointed in Rydedale District Council's rejection of Paul Andrews' motion to reject the Environment Agency's flood management plan. Of the council members who voted against the motion only one actually lives in a flood area and curiously that is Coun Knaggs himself. Perhaps he will have a belated change of heart when water is lapping at his door as a result of the mismanagement of our rivers by the agency. It is surely indefensible to invoke the party whip to reject a motion when that motion is not in any sense a political one.

Coun Howard Keal will, of course, be quite dry behind the flood defences in Malton/Norton but it is to his credit that he was one of those who fought so hard to get these in place. But his town is not the only part of Ryedale and perhaps he should think more of his neighbours further afield.

The Environment Agency's proposals have many good points but what is totally unacceptable is its avowed intent not to maintain our rivers by dredging and clearance nor to maintain the flood banks which have protected us since they were installed in 1947. The agency pleads lack of money but remember, they are an agency of Defra whose management of their own financial affairs in recent years has given rise to this lack of funds. However this does not explain why regular work on our rivers has not been carried out since the Environment Agency took over from the Rivers Authority a generation ago. This is an issue that affects us all, especially those of us in the rural villages and where the size of a town like Pickering, does not attract sufficient monetary interest from the agency.

This is not a political issue and should be in every voter's mind when being asked for their vote by Couns Knaggs, Keal, our prospective Parliamentary candidates et al.

John Morgan, Salton