Should coastal Britain surrender to the tides? | Environment | The Guardian
New kinds of coastal adaptation must be judged when the going gets
tough. The largest managed realignment scheme on the open coast in
Europe was completed late last year at Medmerry, West Sussex. Like most locals, Alan Chamberlain, manager of Medmerry Park holiday village,
was horrified when the Environment Agency proposed punching a hole in
the sea defences and "letting the sea go". But it protected homes with
four miles of new floodbanks inland and turned agricultural land into
lakes and marshes. Locals scoffed that £28m was being spent on creating a bird reserve,
but when it was hammered by the January storms, it worked. "It's really
been tested. We're just amazed at how well we've come out of it," says
Chamberlain. "Normally by now we would've had flooding, but we've had
none at all."
Sometimes, there is no need to choose between
protecting people or countryside: Medmerry's new wetlands have enabled
the holiday village to revamp itself as an ecotourism destination. And
realignment projects that help wildlife can tap into funding unavailable
to conventional coastal defences. Orford Ness
coped with the winter storms better than expected because of new
ditches, sluices and lagoons created by a €1m wildlife project funded by
EU LIFE+. Ironically, this was designed to help rare birds during
droughts, but the measures have alleviated the floods.
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