Increasing Wales’ resilience to climate change and flooding, and adapting to its effects, must be pushed to the top of everyone’s agenda if the nation is to reduce its vulnerability to extreme weather events.
That is the call from the Chief Executive of Natural Resources Wales (NRW), Clare Pillman on the one-year anniversary of the February 2020 floods triggered by Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge.
The combined impacts of the storms resulted in record rainfall and river levels, and some of the most significant and devastating flooding Wales has seen since the 1970s with 3,130 properties affected right across the country.
The Met Office’s confirmation that February 2020 was the wettest February and fifth wettest month on record came as no surprise to the communities that endured the effects of the exceptional rainfall at that time.
The insights and the data brought to light in NRW’s reviews of the floods revealed the growing and real threat of the climate emergency, which is projected to cause wetter, stormier winters, more intense rainfall in summer and sea levels to rise at an ever-increasing pace.
In the year that the UK takes the Presidency of the UN Climate Change conference (COP26) in Glasgow, NRW is urging governments at all levels, businesses and individuals to seize the opportunity to be more forward-looking in the search for solutions as Wales charters the best way forward to make its communities more resilient to flooding.
Clare Pillman, Chief Executive of Natural Resources Wales said:
Throughout the pandemic, NRW has continued to inspect, and repair where required, flood defences damaged in the February floods, prioritising those communities most at risk of flooding.
In the immediate aftermath of the flooding, operational teams worked in partnership with other flood risk management authorities to remove blockages in rivers and on structures.
2,127 flood defences and associated structures have been inspected to ensure that they continue to offer the protection they were designed to. Inspections have also been undertaken on 170 high risk assets on the NRW land estate such as bridges, and over 100 coal tips.
All works to NRW’s flood defences that required immediate attention have been completed to ensure communities retain the same level of flood protection they had before winter 2019/20.
The Rivers Cynon and Taff were significantly impacted, with over 60 locations requiring repairs, of which more than 40 have been completed and the remainder included in our ongoing programme.
Other repairs to flood assets at locations including Abergele, Llanrwst, upstream and within Llanfair Talhaiarn, Ponthir, Usk town and on the Afon Elwy upstream of St Asaph have also been completed. Numerous assets have also been identified requiring work in the short term and these have been built into a work programme for this year. These include work at Machen, Risca, Glasbury and Towyn.
The improvements made to the digital services on NRW’s website now provide an even greater level of service to at-risk areas, giving comprehensive and real-time flood risk, river level, rainfall and sea level information to households, businesses and communities. NRW has also focused on training more staff to do incident roles, meaning more staff will be ready to step away from their day job to join incident response rotas.
Jeremy Parr, Head of Flood Risk and Incident Management at Natural Resources Wales said:
Lesley Griffiths, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, said:
Information on what to do before, during and after a flood is also available on the NRW website. The new service on rainfall, river and sea levels is also available on the website with flood alerts and warnings updated every 15 minutes at www.naturalresources.wales/flooding
