River dredging is a simple answer to Yorkshire's flooding woes: Yorkshire Post Letters

A view of the flood water at Fishlake, in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Picture: Richard McCarthy/PA

Once again we see homes and lives being ruined by the floods caused by rivers being unable to cope with the recent heavy rainfall, and yet again we here politicians saying they have spend millions on flood defence systems and will continue to do so.

28 shocking photos of the flooding in YorkshireAm I missing the point here? Let’s just think, what is a river? It is of course a natural drain that removes excess water from the land and out to sea, so what do we do with a drain that cannot remove water, we clean it out!

Heartbroken woman loses home and business in just 20 minutes in Yorkshire floodsSo why does the Government not fund river dredging and the removal of fallen trees and other blockages in order to facilitate the water to flow freely out to sea?

A resident is saved by fire crews as homes are submerged by rising flood water, Yarborough Terrace, Doncaster. Picture: Tom Maddick/SWNS

If this work was carried out regularly then there may be no need at all to build more barriers which only move the problem further downstream, this could be a permanent solution to this annual problem. Or am I just being too simplistic?

From: Paul Muller, Woodthorpe Gardens, Sandal, Wakefield.

As our atmosphere becomes warmer it will hold more water in the clouds. One cubic metre of water weighs the same as a cubic metre of concrete; that is one ton.

As water begins to flow its momentum increases to many more tons of energy. It is followed by many more tons of water. When this flow of water hits the side of a bridge with such force it knocks it down as can be seen recently in North Yorkshire and Derbyshire at Whaley Bridge.

A car sits in flood water in the town of Fishlake near Doncaster after the river Don burst its banks. Picture: Anthony Devlin/Getty

The solution is to deepen the rivers by dredging as is done throughout Continental Europe. Building walls around rivers is just a waste of money and does not work.

Water will find its way around any object as can be seen in the flooding of house even when sandbags, doors and windows are used and closed. You would be better of using arrows to tell the water where to go.

From: Dick Lindley, Altofts, Normanton.

If we dredged our rivers, increasing the depth of the river channels and at the same time increasing the height of the river banks by using the dredged material to increase the height of those river banks thereby increasing by 100 per cent the volume of water which our rivers are capable of handling safely during periods of high rainfall.

This would save the endless annual misery for countless householders, business owners and farmers, rather than allowing the excess floodwater into their houses, precious businesses and onto valuable food producing land, to be safely contained within the deepened river channels and higher flood banks until it reaches the sea. QED.