Cerian: Hi there and welcome to the Natural Resources Wales Podcast mini series on flood risk management. My name's Cerian Gingell and I work here at Natural Resources Wales. In this series you'll hear from the different teams who work together to reduce the risk of flooding to communities in Wales. This will give you a really good overview of what flood risk is, what we're doing to manage it in Wales and what impact the climate emergency is having on flood risk in Wales both now and in the future.
Hello and welcome to episode 9 of the Natural Resources Wales Flood Risk Management mini-series! Today I’m joined by Ben Hext who works in our national asset management team. Welcome Ben, and thanks so much for joining us!
I think to kick things off, and before we venture fully into the world of asset management it’d be really nice to hear about your background. Can you tell us a bit about your education and career path? What is it that’s led you to this area of work and being in Natural Resources Wales?
BH: Thanks Cerian. It seems a while ago since my days in education, although I’m still learning lots and lots now. But after high school, where I loved geography, tolerated physics and mathematics, but loved Kayaking, Cycling and the great outdoors, I went on to study Geophysics at University. This is the study of earths physical processes, natural hazards and how we can measure them. Such as Seismology and Volcanology, or prospecting for oil and minerals. After graduating and a wonderful year or travelling the world and odd jobs to pay my way, I landed a job as a project Geophysicist in North-East Wales.
CG: Wow a year of travel sounds wonderful! Where did you go? What was your favourite place?
BH:
CG: That sounds really exciting! You were telling us about your first job as a project Geophysicist?
BH: Yes, I started working in that job where I undertook seismic, magnetic, hydrographic, and even unexploded bomb surveys around the UK and Ireland, using highly sensitive specialist geophysics equipment. It felt a bit like “Time Team” but a lot less glamourous and definitely no TV cameras.
CG: Unexploded bombs! Wow! That’s quite the first job!
BH: It was a really interesting job, got to see loads of new places you wouldn’t normally have access to and have the excitement of trying to detect bombs left over from the war time blitz. Even today World War 2 bombs are still discovered and hit the news, especially when the controlled explosion is a big one and requires a huge exclusion zone, such as Exeter in 2021, where houses were damaged from the fall out!
Following my interest of rivers and white-water kayaking, a job came up in the Environment Agency managing river topographic surveys for a large part of North-West England. This was a fascinating role for me and gave me access to see many of the rivers and culverts than run beneath parts of Greater Manchester, and all the flood defences to help manage those really densely populated areas.
This later opened the door to working in Wales with the team that manages hydraulic flood models. These simulate flooding, their impacts and we publish the outputs of those simulations on our public facing maps. Shortly before the pandemic I moved roles to look at adaptation of tidal flood defences in the face of sea level rise we are facing as a society, which is a really exciting but challenging area. I think you’ve already heard a little more about that in a previous episode.
But more recently I work with a team that hold and manage most of the public facing data held on flood risk management assets as well as the flood risk maps. This entails me working with flood colleagues across Wales, as well as the United Kingdom.
CG: You’ve tried your hand at a fair few different aspects of flood risk management in your career to date…So let’s get into your current work area. What are flood risk management assets?
BH: Flood risk management assets are any landscape feature (built or natural) that helps manage an elevated level of water on a flood plain and helps manage and protect homes or businesses from flooding.
This could be obvious things like large embankments or engineered walls next to a river, the sea, or an estuary. But it can also be more subtle features like ponds, lakes or areas that may remain dry 99.9% of the time or have a recreational purpose too. These are known as flood storage reservoirs.
Sometimes flood assets are completely out of site, such as a culvert so that a river can flow underground. And these days they may be more natural features further upstream that help contain some excess water or rainfall run off closer to the head waters. Or if at the coast it may be by adding a lot more sand onto a beach, to help manage the impact of waves and splash over.
We now use a whole range and combination of individual assets to work together as a system to better protect our communities from flood water.
CG: Yes, we’ve heard about how natural flood management is becoming more widely used to compliment more hard engineered solutions now, but it sounds like there’s even more parts to the puzzle. Now that we know what flood risk management assets are, maybe you can tell us how we use them?
BH: Absolutely! When we think of flood risk management assets, it’s easy to think it’s a relatively modern concept, but in actual fact humanity has built on, or farmed flood plains as well as reclaimed marshland for millennia. It’s normally flat and fertile ground, which makes it easy to build on or farm.
The earliest recorded “flood risk assets” were built in China some 2900 years ago, and in the UK during Roman times, mainly to protect forts. These may have been simple turf or gravel mounds to keep out the spring tide or seasonal floods, affording some protection to people’s homes or to farmers and their land.
Over time these developed into larger improved banks to help keep out flood water and ditches to help drain down the landward side. Over centuries these have all further evolved and engineered into the bigger embankments or more complex drainage systems that we see today.
But as we see today our communities have expanded onto many floodplains and coastal strips and there is less space for an excess of water. We’re also reliant on some really old flood risk assets that perhaps may not be up to the job as we see the real effects of a changing climate.
So, we do have a programme of maintenance, repair, and where necessary and justifiable, new build or upgrade of assets.
But we can’t protect everyone, everywhere all the time. And we can’t just keep building higher defences either. If we start to build higher, the impacts can be much worse if they do ever fail, plus they become less practical when living by a river or sea, as they begin to block peoples’ views.
So instead, we try to build things, so they are more resilient or part of an overall system that manages flooding a little differently. That includes things like retaining more water upstream of a community using assets such as flood storage reservoirs, setting back embankments or developing some natural flood management solutions such as leaky dams that I’m sure you’ve heard about in our natural flood management episode.
CG: That’s right, Vicky talked to us about some of the more nature-based assets that we’re starting to use more and more. You’ve mentioned flood storage reservoirs there – can you just explain for us what that means?
BH: So flood storage reservoirs are purpose built areas to contain water, either though damming valley or building an embankment around an area where you want to contain the water to help manage flood risk. These are normally on or next to a river, so that when there’s an excess of water, it will either fill up or spill into there. A bit like having a huge bathtub to hand to put your water in when you’ve got too much.
Sometimes these have dual purposes, and may be a dry recreational area, or golf course most of the time. But in times of flood, get completely inundated, to ease water levels elsewhere.
Natural Resources Wales is also the reservoir enforcement authority for Wales. This means it is our duty to ensure all reservoirs in Wales are built and operated within the law and that they are really safe for good reason! So, this doesn’t just mean flood storage reservoirs I mention, but also hydro-power schemes and drinking water reservoirs, some of which go back to the Victorian era.
We also have some strict controls on whether or not you can build any new homes, offices, schools, hospitals, or factories in a floodplain. Aside from the obvious benefit of not putting more people in harm’s way, we already have plenty of flood risk to deal with here in Wales, with existing homes and properties that were built on flood plains before people really understood the risk, impact, and cost that we know today.
We need to remember though that flooding is a natural occurrence and there’s plenty of evidence it has been happening throughout geological time, and it has helped form the beautiful landscape we see in Wales today. But today there over 245,000 properties at flood risk in Wales, which is about 1 in 8 properties, and that will sadly only increase in time as we see higher river levels, more intense rainfall, and increased sea levels as a result of a changing climate.
Flooding can be devasting and have some real long-term impacts not only physically, but also on people’s mental wellbeing, and of course in the most severe cases it can pose a very real danger to life. It’s really expensive for the economy and insurance companies too - or example, a typical home can incur about £40,000 of damage following a flood. That’s a lot when multiplied up across a community.
The worst case I have ever seen was following the west Wales summer floods in 2012, where muddy, filthy water flooded a home up to the ground floor ceiling level! The occupants were lucky to escape!
So, we do need to manage flood risk where we can, provide a warning service in case of flooding and prevent any new potentially inappropriate development on the flood plain.
CG: So given that flooding is as you’ve said a natural occurrence, I’d have thought that climate change is having an impact on it? Is climate change impacting your work now? And do you see it continuing to have an impact in future and if so, how does this work need to adapt to tackle it?
I’ve only been working in flood risk management for 20 years, and I’ve seen a noticeable change and increasing unpredictability to the weather patterns affecting us.
There are more frequent “Big” floods affecting Wales, then we’re seeing more prolonged periods of dry hot weather.
Big storms are named now, which helps people stand up, take notice, and do something about them a little more, especially if they’re already aware they are living in an area of flood risk.
Flood science is having to evolve to cope with this change, as the flood defences that were built to a 1:100 annual chance of flooding in the 90’s and 00’s may not perform to that standard now, and with climate change that standard of protection will likely continue to reduce into the future.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that 1:100 annual chance extreme sea level events are projected to occur about once a year by 2100 (IPCC 2019).
Higher sea levels will cause waves to carry greater energy to Wales’ coastal defences and cause further impact to communities that are already affected by coastal flooding and erosion.
Unfortunately, it’s just not possible to protect everyone everywhere so, we’re having to look into other ways of managing flood risk by resilience and adaptation rather than just building more, or bigger, and higher defences. Helping to make communities more resilient to flooding by considering adaptation for example will help them to recover quicker and with less cost but might also help biodiversity and the nature emergency.
We’ll need to set back some flood defence assets, where we can, to make space for water. This will help lower overall flood water levels or reduce wave energy near the coast during a flood, but also enhance the biodiversity and habitats for a community. These can also become great amenities for the community, which are great for both physical health and mental wellbeing.
In some cases, we may even need to move part of or all of a community, as it may be simply not cost affective or safe to continue to protect them. This is really challenging and will take decades in the planning. So those listening in today could be part of that plan and the ultimate solutions.
I think though in short, in order to help us meet the challenge of climate change and its effects on flood risk management in Wales, we need to adapt, think innovatively, and make Wales more resilient to the inevitable challenge of more rain and rising seas.
CG: There’s a lot to consider, but it’s very reassuring to hear that all of these things are on your radar and being explored as a way of tackling the effects of climate change here in Wales.
Before I let you go, I’d love to know what your favourite part of the job is? What do you get out of your work, either professionally or personally?
BH: I really enjoy the day-to-day variety, not just of the work itself but the people I work with across Natural Resources Wales. I also find my role on our incident management rota really rewarding. Here I’m responsible for issuing flood warnings to communities in North Wales, so that they can prepare for an impending flood.
I also like the people I work with and the longer-term positive impact of our work on society. It can be really challenging at times but rewarding also.
I feel and I hope that I’m contributing to making a better place for my children and my children’s children so that they can live in a better, healthier and more climate resilient society too.
CG: Thanks Ben, for giving up your time to talk to me today. It’s been so interesting to hear all about the work that you do, and the way it’s helping to create a more resilient Wales.
Our next episode will be released next week and will be focused on the skills, development, and career opportunities in FRM.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, if you have any comments or questions, you can contact us by email – which you can find in the show notes. You’ll also find links to our flood risk management pages where you can view some of the things that we talked about here today.
Thanks for listening!
