The real reason for flooding in Somerset Levels? Not global warming – the pump was turned off! | Watts Up With That?
Bishop Hill writes: Commenter “Corporal Jones’ Ghost’ left this comment on one of the flooding threads. It looks to be quite important.
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I want to tell you what really has happened on the Somerset Levels.
I am remaining anonymous for good reason, I think you’ll understand why.
You have to go back to 1939, when the MOD decided that they needed a
new Munitions factory for HDX explosives, HDX uses a lot of water, all
munitions manufacture does, but HDX is greedy.
The levels had too much water and so we built one on the Levels, ROF37 or ROF Bridgewater or ROF Woolavington, it’s all the same place.
To ensure that there was enough water even on the waterlogged Levels,
we built the Huntspill River, we then connected it to the River Brue to
the North and the Kings Sedgemoor Drain via a pipe to the South, we
also widened the River Sowy to get water to our factory.
We would use >5 thousand million litres every year, rain or shine.
We then disposed of it into the sea, we had to do this regardless of
the tidal conditions and we had steam pumps that did this remarkable
task, they pumped out at the Huntspill sluice 3 thousand million ltrs a
year, the rest was either evaporated, too contaminated and shipped
off-site or left the factory in the product!
Part of the legacy f the fall of Communism was that we didn’t need quite so much ordnance to practice killing the deadly foe.
In the mid 1990s the decision was made and we ran down the ROFs.
By 2000 ROF37 was given an execution date of 2008 and like all state executions, it was carried out on time.
We all knew that the ‘run-on’ from our departure would be that the
EA/Levels Boards needed to take over pumping, they couldn’t afford our
old system as it was very old and on restricted land.
I should explain at this point that the ONLY pumping done was ours,
we could and did pump no matter the tides, we’d taken over the
responsibility/control in 1940 for all high volume pumping on the
Levels.
We advised that the Huntspill be automated and the Kings Sedgemoor
Drain be pumped and made strong representation to that effect.
But every meeting with the EA ended in frustration as they never sent
a single seriously knowledgeable Drainage Engineer to any meeting. The
Levels Boards understood the issues and tried to get the pumps
installed.
It didn’t happen.
Bishop Hill writes: Commenter “Corporal Jones’ Ghost’ left this comment on one of the flooding threads. It looks to be quite important.
============================================================
I want to tell you what really has happened on the Somerset Levels.
I am remaining anonymous for good reason, I think you’ll understand why.
You have to go back to 1939, when the MOD decided that they needed a
new Munitions factory for HDX explosives, HDX uses a lot of water, all
munitions manufacture does, but HDX is greedy.
The levels had too much water and so we built one on the Levels, ROF37 or ROF Bridgewater or ROF Woolavington, it’s all the same place.
To ensure that there was enough water even on the waterlogged Levels,
we built the Huntspill River, we then connected it to the River Brue to
the North and the Kings Sedgemoor Drain via a pipe to the South, we
also widened the River Sowy to get water to our factory.
We would use >5 thousand million litres every year, rain or shine.
We then disposed of it into the sea, we had to do this regardless of
the tidal conditions and we had steam pumps that did this remarkable
task, they pumped out at the Huntspill sluice 3 thousand million ltrs a
year, the rest was either evaporated, too contaminated and shipped
off-site or left the factory in the product!
Part of the legacy f the fall of Communism was that we didn’t need quite so much ordnance to practice killing the deadly foe.
In the mid 1990s the decision was made and we ran down the ROFs.
By 2000 ROF37 was given an execution date of 2008 and like all state executions, it was carried out on time.
We all knew that the ‘run-on’ from our departure would be that the
EA/Levels Boards needed to take over pumping, they couldn’t afford our
old system as it was very old and on restricted land.
I should explain at this point that the ONLY pumping done was ours,
we could and did pump no matter the tides, we’d taken over the
responsibility/control in 1940 for all high volume pumping on the
Levels.
We advised that the Huntspill be automated and the Kings Sedgemoor
Drain be pumped and made strong representation to that effect.
But every meeting with the EA ended in frustration as they never sent
a single seriously knowledgeable Drainage Engineer to any meeting. The
Levels Boards understood the issues and tried to get the pumps
installed.
It didn’t happen.
