Sir,
Having lived for over twenty years in West Oxford in a home annually threatened by possible floods, I have been astonished by the complacent response of the Oxford Times and Mail in accepting the assurance of the various agencies involved that spending £150 million on their flood alleviation scheme will prevent my home and my neighbours' homes in the future.
When our hospitals, schools, the police, the fire service, and the homeless, are desperately short of public funds, your readers deserve more questions to be asked. You report that there are numerous objections from ‘landowners’. I understand that some of the most important of these landowners are various colleges of the University who are unlikely to object since they must have long wished to be able to build on their land.
We are told it has been ‘proven’ that dredging and clearing the local streams so that they would have the same or greater cross-section as the planned new channel will not prevent local flooding. Why then will the new channel do so with the same or lesser cross-section and only after the flooding has begun?
Having inherited a situation in which the proper maintenance of these streams has been neglected for decades, is it possible that this has been allowed to continue in order for the authorities to ‘prove’ the new channel is the only solution? Giving the three years of monstrous traffic problems that are predicted as a result, and the effect of this on hundreds of local shops and businesses, I would recommend banking the £150 million and spending the interest on some far simple work: with a spade and a shovel.
My interest is solely to want a solution that works. To start where the water is flowing. To start now.
Sincerely, Colin Hannaford.
educatingmessiahs@gmail.com