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Bridgwater Tidal Barrier cost reaches £100M

Sedgemoor District Council  and the Environment Agency  recently reported at the Somerset Rivers Authority (SRA) meeting  in January a 50% increase in the cost of the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier. The reported cost appears to have increased from  £70M in October 2017 to £100M in January  2018  (five months) and yet it went through without comment .

The cost escalation of a scheme that does nothing to address the 2014 fluvial flood is eye watering and yet, according to the minutes, no action is taken to explain why this escalation had occurred and what action was being done to mitigate it. The mere acceptance by our elected members is not acceptable if the delivery of our infrastructure is to be managed locally rather than through central government.

Bridgwater Tidal Barrier Cost History

  1. March 2014 the cost of  barrier was reported at £26M
  2. September  2016 The EA  gave the public figures during a public consultation  various options with costs;  site 5 the selected site was costed at £45M – £60M.
  3. October 2017 the BBC reported on the cost of the scheme to be  in the order of £70M  “Bridgwater tidal barrier costs ‘could go up by £10m”
  4. January 2018  indicates the cost is now around £100M as noted below from the published SRA draft minutes.

In a period of around 15 months from September 2016 to January 2018 the cost of the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier scheme rose by around £50M or 100% and not one word of concern is  expressed or recorded in the public domain. This cost is now  nearly 4x  the original cost estimate in 2014.

Bridgwater Tidal Barrier is now a £100M scheme where

  • the financial investment makes no contribution to mitigating a repeating 2014 fluvial flood,
  • repeated saltwater flooding onto farm land from the River Parrett is seen as being an acceptable regime despite poisoning farmland and wildlife. 
  • there is no plan in place beyond the barriers  100 year design life
  • brings saltwater  onto our agricultural land

Looking at the numbers the only thing that can be concluded is that the cost estimates presented to the public and to councils for the purpose of decision making were widely inaccurate or inconsistent either of which is unacceptable for investment decisions; especially decisions that affect the long term future of Bridgwater and Somerset Levels beyond.

The selection decision of the current site (Site 5) was chosen purely on the basis of the width of the river and must now be called into question.  It would appear that the cost of the other downstream elements of the scheme must be causing this cost escalation. A cost and concern that were dismissed at the time of the consultation. 

Bridgwater Tidal Barrier is now a £100M scheme where

  • the financial investment makes no contribution to mitigating a repeating 2014 fluvial flood,
  • there is no plan in place beyond the barriers  100 year design life
  • repeated saltwater flooding onto farm land from the River Parrett is seen as being an acceptable regime despite poisoning farmland and wildlife. 
  • the EA wants to dig up the very land its meant to be protecting to win the soil  for flood defences.

No project should be seeing this amount of budgetary increase  without  challenge.  Cost escalation on this scale is unacceptable and unnecessary. There is clearly a continuing problem regarding a  lack of oversight both technically and financially in this project.

What should be done?

The extra £50M buys a much better scheme than the one Bridgwater is getting. £100M would allow

  1. the barrier to be located as is normal practice as close to the mouth of the river as possible which in this case  is Combwich. Combwich was never looked on the basis of cost, clearly that is an argument that can no longer be supported.
  2. elimination of most of the downstream river works that the EA’s tests indicate will need to happen every 35 years or so.
  3. increased fluvial capacity in the River Parrett and the King Sedgmoor Drain potentially benefiting communities beyond Sedgemoor
  4. a solution that can be economically extended beyond the 100 year design life currently offered.

£100M is £1M a year for next 100 years on scheme that will be rendered redundant once the river banks can no longer be raised to combat sea level rise; the scheme in present form is throwing money away 

The public expect that those on scrutiny committees to use there position to bring transparency  and accountability to the process of public expenditure. Such bringing to account appears to be sadly lacking together with visibility of any independent engineering review that a project of £100M warrants. The project is growing in value and the oversight is not growing with it.

Unfortunately what we see happening is the management of infrastructure projects by people, primarily councillors  and  officers who are unqualified to do so. The SRA is a prime example of an organisation primarily engaged in  the commissioning of engineering activities with no engineers in lead roles.  The Bridgwater Tidal Barrier has become a Grand Designs episode of Civil Engineering

Way forward

A  Public Inquiry  into the management  of the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier scheme should be convened that should look at

  1. Cost
  2. Management
  3. Consultation process
  4. Location  (including the examination of Combwich)
  5. Competency and experience  of councillors  and officials  to manage civil engineering works such as the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier and other SRA projects.,

 

 

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Environment Agency – Landowner Information Pack

The Environment Agency (EA)  like the many  political parties with the word Democratic in  their title seems ever farther away  from what people imagine the organisation to be about. Protecting the Environment and the people seems not to be one of them if it gets in the way of its long term Parrett Estuary agenda  at Chilton Trinity north of Bridgwater.

However any doubts that the EA  doesn’t have a sense of humour or understands irony was firmly dispelled by its latest offering to the  Chilton Trinity landowners.  These are landowners whose land is impacted by downstream works  resulting from planned construction of the £100M Bridgwater Tidal Barrier close to the town rather than is conventional practice at the mouth of the River Parrett.

In March 2018 each landowner was the recipient of a document called BRIDGWATER TIDAL  BARRIER  DOWNSTREAM FLOOD  DEFENCES Landowner information Pack.

The EA’s  apparent lack of understanding of the impact of salt water flooding onto farm land. is worrying. The expected  floodwater  is not like 2014 when the water that covered the Somerset Levels was predominantly fluvial run off (freshwater). This will be seawater coming up the River Parrett from the Seven Estuary that over tops the river banks. 

This document also asks farmer’s to allow the Environment Agency to dig borrow pits in the land the EA are meant to be protecting.  Borrow Pits are meant to be refilled  with other less suitable soil so it does not lessen traffic as the EA claim but only if  they are left as  just open pits in which case they aren’t borrow pits.  Do we really need to excavate the land we are meant to be protecting?

The  alternative is a sustainable construction method that also seems to be a low priority of the EA.  Construction of the bank improvements could be phased over a number of years using local contractors and material reclaimed from new developments. 

The proposed pits will hold  the seawater (saltwater)  rather than see it quickly flushed away back to the river. Saltwater is poison to agricultural land and the habitat  we currently have in Chilton Trinity.  These  pits  will, according to the  trial embankment test done for the Cannington Bends improvement scheme, need to be reopened or enlarged every 35 years of so to make up the levels as the made up river banks settle.

The  EA promise going forward regarding maintaining bank  levels quite rightly only talks about intent; the EA cannot provide a firm promise however they do know  that once the land is poisoned the cost for further expenditure on bank raising will not be justified.

No one can say that the EA does not have a sense of humour especially when  the Chilton Trinity farmers are encouraged  by the EA to act as turkeys to vote for Christmas.  The EA’s long term ambition of an inter tidal habitat remains our pantomime villain  – he is behind us and  we chose not to look around and see him. Whilst appearing to help the EA  are actually creating a self fulfilling prophecy that will see  the area become salt marsh.

This document

  • Only talks about 2024 and not 100 years in the future (2124)  which is much more interesting for long term prosperity of everyone including our farmers handing land onto future generations. ( nobody says what happens when the banks can no longer be raised)
  • Confirms the level of protection they are planning to maintain to farm land is very low.
  • Omitted the future flood maps.
  • Omitted to  mention that the flood water will be seawater .
  • Demonstrates on page 4 a complete lack  of understanding of the impact of saltwater onto agricultural land. (Some Lincolnshire farmland has still not fully recovered from the 1953 flood when the North Sea over topped the sea defences)
  • Encourages the formation of borrow pits (actually just pits) that, when the banks of the River Parrett are overtopped, will trap seawater and ultimately destroy the value of the land its meant to protect.  Destroying wildlife and fauna in the process that cannot handle saline conditions A case of the medicine killing the patient.
  • Creates through the use of borrow pits mores areas of stagnant water that in our warming climate will be a breeding ground for insects, one of the reasons given for not damming the River Parrett.
  • Fails to mention the pits will need to be used and extended at least 3x as according to the embankment trial the river banks will need raising every 35 years.
  • Does not mention the final height of the river banks in 100 years’ time, for every metre raised the bank get wider by  2 x 4.0m and the banks will need to be raised by around 0.80m. (2’6″) excluding the continued settlement of the river banks that always means 2 steps forward and always 1 step back.
  • Re-confirms that agricultural land will be preferentially flooded.
  • The EA commitment is qualified as only an “intent” . Will SDC ratepayers pay for the maintenance when they don’t get anything back? It’s a huge liability that SDC could end up with that has no benefit to the town.  In a very short period of time, the cost of maintaining river banks to protect a small area of land and some ponds (flooded borrow pits) will not be considered worthwhile.

No one can say we were not warned about this  EA scheme and still no one asks what happens after the proposed scheme, the Bridgwater Tidal Barrier, can no longer counter rising sea levels?

One can only appreciate the irony and the humour of the situation  along with the EA’s other recent bits of entertainment

  • The   gathering up the local newt population at Steart and their subsequent disappearance
  • Diverting migrating elvers away from their normal route to our freshwater river system into the Steart Peninsula scheme.
  • Planning to build a tidal barrier as far inland and upstream as possible contrary to all normal accepted good practice.

to paraphrase Churchill

never has so much money been spent in such a small place to so little effect 

This document is at best poorly put together and at worst a device designed to obscure the true impact of the  plan from those most affected

As this slow-motion environmental, and for Bridgwater, and economic car crash occurs we should not forget that three prominent members of the Wessex Regional Flood and Coastal Committee live within a mile or so of where this unnecessary and increasingly misrepresented process is going on.  No objection or question is heard regarding the impact of the EA Scheme; there is no visible oversight.

The Internal Drainage Boards are equally silent as is the Somerset Rivers Authority

Finally, you know its wrong when that well-known litmus test is applied; The  scheme in its present form  has the support  Ian Liddell-Grainger