COMMENT: Agency doing good work to tackle flooding (From Bicester Advertiser)
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COMMENT: Agency doing good work to tackle flooding
11:00am Saturday 20th October 2012 in News
THERE will be anger in Wendlebury at the Environment Agency’s delay over issuing a Flood Alert six hours after the village actually started flooding.
Wednesday night’s heavy deluge caught out many, including families and businesses in Abingdon and Nuneham Courtenay.
But it is unfair to say the agency was caught completely unawares. We are aware that staff were on duty and on stand-by on Wednesday night.
There are limits, however, to what it can do – it is not omnipresent and able to hold back all floodwaters.
The agency has carried out a lot of good work in the five years since those catastrophic 2007 floods and it is not too high praise to say there have been floods it has helped avoid.
Significantly in this case it also recognises it fell short on its flood alert warning to Wendlebury so hopefully will not make a repeat of this regrettable error.
