Article published in Mersea Island Society Mistral magazine 2021 page 36

Whatever the headlines may be by the time you read this it is certain that those poor souls affected by flooding last Winter will still bear the scars. I do not claim to be a drainage expert but as a farmer who was taught that the first essential in producing crops on 'heavy' land is good drainage I have had to learn a lot about it. For those not acquainted with the term 'heavy' it basically means land with sufficient clay content to hold or impede water. Clay particles are tiny and bind together, unlike sand which consists of relatively large particles. Pure clay is impervious and can be used to line reservoirs or even be fired to make pottery. Soils with clay content are much better at drought resistance during the summer months because of plant roots ability to access that moisture. However if plant roots sit in waterlogged soil in winter they are starved of oxygen, die and are not there to help the plants survive in a drought. If you want a good comparison of heavy farmland v light farmland the extremes would be Mersea Island and the Brecklands of Suffolk or Norfolk.

Until the introduction of widespread irrigation systems light land farms were regarded as poor quality, producing low yields due to drought. Today, a lot of these farms can grow high value root crops and vegetables because they dry quickly to allow fieldwork to be carried out on most days of the year and the exact amount of water required for any particular crop can be applied as and when needed. These free draining soils generally do not need man made field drainage systems.

To avoid water logging it is necessary to install a drainage system on many farms. The exact design, spacing and type of drains depends on a whole range of factors such as the type of clay and whether it is grassland or cropped fields. All systems, even drains from roads or housing estates are dependant on the water getting away quickly. If it doesn't, silt builds up and plants start to invade the waterway and the whole scheme is ineffective leading to water logging and flooding further back. The chain of importance leading back from the Sea is rivers, streams, ditches on farms and roadsides, pipes, and then mole drains or gravel banding. A clogged river blocks those arteries all the way back up that chain.

It is possible to find evidence of underground pipes in fields dating back hundreds of years. Many still carry water but sometimes cause a wet place in a field at a point where they have collapsed or are blocked. These old clay pipes were laid in a hand dug trench over half a metre deep and then covered with faggots (bundles of sticks). Later, in the early parts of the twentieth century, clinker was used instead of faggots. Eventually drains were laid by mechanical trencher and the trench filled with stone almost up to the surface and today continuous porous plastic pipe is used instead of individual clay pipes. Water finds its way into the material above the pipes and this flow can be aided by mole draining which basically creates a hole in the clay by dragging a two inch torpedo shaped tine every 3 metres for the length of the field. These moles can last many years in good quality clay subsoil. Precision equipment is used to lay the plastic pipes at exactly 24 inches deep so that the mole is pulled at 20 inches, releasing the water into the stone above the pipes without damaging the pipes themselves.

After the second world war the nation realised the importance of home grown food production and huge grants were paid toward good drainage systems. Even in the 1970's a system could cost £500 per acre and up to 60% of this could be claimed back from the Government. Ditches were realigned and dug deeper, field sizes were increased and to make sure these schemes worked efficiently.

Drainage Committees or Boards were created to oversee River maintenance. These were particularly relevant in the Fens where water has to be pumped from dykes up into man made rivers with high banks. Drainage Boards in Essex were largely made up from volunteer farmers and all farmers paid an annual levy. Many of the Boards employees gave long service and understood every stretch of the river. Regular maintenance was carried out, digging silt and reeds and removing fallen or invasive trees. Despite the dredging, wildlife remained abundant.

Today, only one aspect remains and that is the levy paid by farmers! Environmentalists have replaced farmers on the committees. The Rivers Authority has been taken over by the Environment Agency. No living creature or plant must be disturbed without a plethora of reports, surveys and red tape. Fallen willow trees are allowed to reroot in the build up of silt. Reeds and bulrushes add to the general blockage of these great rivers which once carried the water quickly and safely away to reservoirs or the sea. Today's experts no longer understand or care about food production and drainage, it's all about legal protection for an 'endangered species'. It's strange how newts are even in that category and yet whenever anyone wants to build anything there are always newts present! Nobody puts a number on how many newts or dragonflies we need, we always need more and if there are less than there were 100 years ago it must be the farmers fault. These experts have now gone further and decided that ditches and rivers should be blocked to hold the water back and we should turn the verdant pastures and productive arable fields into a giant sponge to avoid flooding downstream where houses have been built on the flood plain. Our government are now being advised to re-introduce Beavers so that this waterway blocking is even more arbitrary and extensive. Oh!, for some other expert to demonstrate how a sponge works - once it reaches capacity it can hold no more but common sense and the bleeding obvious are plainly out of fashion. Those sponges were filled with the first of 2019 winter's great storms and the subsequent flooding lasted for weeks.

Before I'm accused of being anti wildlife let me say that I have planted tens of thousands of trees in my lifetime, I've dug wildlife ponds, loved watching birds and animals, studied plants and natural habitat. I've spent the last 48 hours mourning the death of a female Swan from my wildlife wetland. It was killed for fun by a fox which bit it's head off and left it on its nest. Horrific and cruel, and her male partner has swum and flown around disconsolately since, but it's part of the natural world which we all have to accept. I shed tears when I found it. All creatures that live, sadly die in some way. I am all for encouraging farmers to enhance the natural environment but the pendulum always swings too far. The millions of taxpayers money that was used on drainage to boost the UK's self sufficiency in food is now being thrown away by deliberately blocking the very systems taxpayers paid for. Soon it will be too late and the pendulum will have swung too far the other way as food supply becomes important again. Perhaps the corona virus, painful as it is, will act as a wake up call and balanced thinking can be restored.

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