In respect of Tony Howlett’s letter (Holding back river, December 16), I do not agree that nothing can be done about regular flooding in York. It is a matter of political will, and community pressure.

He mentioned the Foss barrier. Indeed. It cost £3.5 million in 1987 and prevented £10 million of damage in 2000 alone.

You published my letter in 2000 proposing the construction of a bypass canal around York. It would run from Nun Monkton, north of York, to the River Wharfe below Tadcaster, where the floodwater would discharge back into the Ouse.

It would follow existing drainage channels for 98 per cent of its route, channels which are already often flooded in winter and would never again be if connected in this way. Valuable land along the Ouse flood plain would be freed up, and these would help pay for the project. There are many other benefits as well.

The biggest saving, though, would be in the permanent elimination of the costly flooding of York.

In 2000 I sent a detailed plan to the then Floods Minister, one Elliot Morley, but he did not even acknowledge it, let alone reply. With short-sighted, indifferent politicians like these, more interested in their own welfare than their constituents’, is it any wonder that nothing permanent is ever done?

If York was a Dutch city it would have been done years, if not centuries, ago. John Simpson, Church Road, Osbaldwick, York.


• WITH reference to Tony Howlett’s letter, the solution, as I have written countless times, is to recommence dredging rivers and cutting back overhanging branches.

At Kexby one “archway” of the little bridge is completely blocked by debris, and at Stamford Bridge looking downriver there are similar hold-ups of fallen trees and solid silt, with only eight feet or so of view.

It will be much cheaper in the long run than saving a few hundred yards of riverside homes in York – (Hugh Bayley, Defences pledge, The Press, December 12) and protect whole areas instead.

Once farmland is desecrated, as in the recent North country floods, it is lost forever. With increases in population can Britain afford to do this? I think not.

Pamela Frankland, Dunnington, York.