Floods

[armaghniac]

Urban runoff is part of it, but not the whole story.

There's a fascinating article here in the Guardian about policies that "make flooding inevitable" in the UK:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/flooding-public-spending-britain-europe-policies-homes

The short version is that farmers are incentivized to remove trees from their land even when there's no compelling reason for it. Since trees absorb tons of water and release it slowly, removing them reduces the land's capacity to cope with downpours. Water that would have been slowly released into the rivers now goes straight into them, and that's bad news for towns and cities that were built beside rivers. All the talk about flood defenses is overlooking why there's so much flooding in the first place.

Even agricultural grants for drainage could increase flooding in a town downstream by speeding up the runoff. There isn't much joined up thinking in these matters.

[LeoMc]

No real thought given to natures ability to manage itself.
There was a real push a couple of years ago to maintain bogs and prevent them being over run  in the south sperrins by pulling tree saplings to prevent them establishing.
I remember at the time thinking that the bogs were created by millennia of trees growing, absorbing carbon and water and dying. Preventing them over growing was interfering with nature.

[illdecide]

Some good Engineers on the board...u guys have it sussed, get a job with Rivers Agency/Waterways Ireland

[foxcommander]

Not sure even Jaws could swallow Joan Burton

[Ball Hopper]

Not sure even Jaws could swallow Joan Burton

He would spit her out...

[armaghniac]

You could imagine a Jonah scenario with her yapping away inside some giant whale.

[T Fearon]

One of the tabloids has the simple caption alongside this picture "Joan Rivers!"😂😂😂😂

[mikehunt]

Do you mean people whining about "water charges"? If so then would it not be an idea for Govt/Irish Water to invest in harvesting this water rather than installing meters while introducing a fixed charge rendering the meters redundant?

Invest requires money, the fixed charge was introduced because of the incessant whining.

Would the money spent on installing meters not have been better invested in improving qctual infrastructure. Bonus payments to staff when I would guess no targets were met considering more than half of people have not paid.  Lot of waste already but u aim a jibe at people who protest against another quango.

[armaghniac]

Leaks are a major issue and Meyers allow these be identified. Bonuses to staff reflected them doing their jobs well, the delinquent actions of some customers is another issue.

[manfromdelmonte]

Drainage of the large bogs in the likes of Longford, Roscommon, Westmeath means that there is very little soakage or holding of water.
Same with farmland.

It basically flows directly into streams and rivers.

This allied with the ESB holding water levels too high in Lough Ree and Lough Derg in order to feed Ardnacrusha, despite it only producing 2% of the nation's power needs, means there's nowhere for the water to go.
When the water goes through the weir at Athlone, there are almosy no proper river banks all the way to Banagher due to the low lying nature of the landscape.

[mikehunt]

Leaks are a major issue and Meyers allow these be identified. Bonuses to staff reflected them doing their jobs well, the delinquent actions of some customers is another issue.

Why not invest the money used on meters on infrastructure instead? These meters are practically redundant yet they're still being installed. We all know why but if Irish Water is about improving infrastructure you'd think they'd start fixing the system first. Paying people to do thier job is called a salary/wage. Bonuses were written in to their contracts whatever the standard of the work. Weren't they already chasing their bonuses in the LRC even though they had no work done.

[seafoid]

The country is super saturated. Even 2 weeks ago you could see how high the water table was, popping up in fields all over the shop. Climate change means more moisture in the atmosphere means more storms means more flooding. And it is only going to get worse.

[foxcommander]

Just to put Joan's predicament into perspective.

Out of touch with reality.

[From the Bunker]

The country is super saturated. Even 2 weeks ago you could see how high the water table was, popping up in fields all over the shop. Climate change means more moisture in the atmosphere means more storms means more flooding. And it is only going to get worse.

Yeah, I've never seen my land as wet! And I mean it is supersaturated. This of course if a byproduct of Global warming. But I'm not sure we could get this again next year. 5/6 years ago we got two years in a row of the coldest winters we had got in years. But they have stayed away since. 2013 and 2014 we got amazing hot summers out of nowhere. The rules seems to be - expect the unexpected!

[Tony Baloney]

Thinking of planting rice in the lawn. Pure marsh at the minute.