York Wild Swimming network have been interested in understanding the histories of where people have swum in the past. One answer to the ‘What would you like to do here in the future?’ question we’ve been posing through the My Castle Gateway process has been ‘swim in the rivers’. ” Where would access be good to maintain? ” Where can you access the river at the moment? This led to our second agenda item and the questions: ‘Today we’ll be talking about access to the rivers – I don’t want putting up walls to prevent flooding to also prevent access, and where we do increase heights we may also need to look at ways of maintaining access – steps up and over or by other means.’Īs a result the Environment Agency are interested in understanding places where access is important. Rather than solve the problem long term raising walls would ‘buy time for upstream water management such as tree planting and re-meandering (the river being made to go further to accommodate more water)’. However, Tom explained, ‘probably the last time we can raise walls across the city without significant impact’. This means considering raising the current flood walls in the centre of York. The Environment Agency are planning for defences to work for a 1 in a 100 year flood. The Viking Recorder near what is now the Park Inn Hotel shows 8mm rise in water levels per year and this rate is increasing. Seven of the last nine highest floods have taken place in the last forty years and the trajectory is for higher water levels and more flooding. The issues were facing is that water levels are rising and flooding is increasing. The aim of the Hub is that people know ‘we are not a faceless organisation, we are here in the centre of York and we here to talk through any questions, issues or concerns’. We began with Tom Pagett from the Environment Agency welcoming us to the Community Hub and introducing us to key issues they are grappling with at the moment. The Environment Agency and flood management plans for York We started the meeting by setting the agenda together and below you can get a sense both of key issues and emerging questions and activities. To continue the conversation we met up at the Environment Agency’s new Community Hub at the bottom of Wellington Row. ‘We need to make York’s rivers friendly again’Įmerging from the My Castle Gateway work has been a network of people interested in talking about the Foss and the Ouse and how we might live well with the city’s rivers. Some of the agenfa items covered in the Living Well With Water meet up
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