Two new flood advice websites have launched for Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset, giving groundwater the official online voice it has apparently been requesting from beneath everyone’s feet.
The Environment Agency says the sites gather advice, information and support links in one place. One covers groundwater flooding in Dorset and Wiltshire. The other supports recovery in Somerset. Residents can now consult a browser instead of measuring the crisis by the height of a neighbour’s hedge, which remains an unreliable but locally popular data source.
Dorset and Wiltshire, largely settled over a chalk aquifer, are experiencing their worst groundwater flooding since 2014 after months of heavy rain. Somerset is also inundated, with water levels only starting to recede on the levels and moors. The internet can explain the difference between rain falling from above and water rising from below, although the ground has traditionally preferred to communicate through roads, fields and one extremely concerned sheep.
The websites offer advice on staying safe, preparing for flooding and signing up for warnings. This may give residents time to move belongings somewhere sensible, such as above the point where the dog has begun inspecting the furniture for buoyancy. It is not a pump, but it is at least an organised response to the discovery that water has more than one route into a house.
The Dorset and Wiltshire site explains the longer groundwater response. The Somerset site supports recovery and raises awareness of operational activity and next steps. Each community therefore gets information suited to its own water problem, rather than the national emergency solution of telling everyone to remain calm while standing in the same puddle.
The Agency says the websites will run for as long as needed and can be used again in future. This is reassuring. Most webpages vanish when their purpose ends, but these have been designed to return whenever the aquifer feels ready for another consultation. Somewhere, a content manager is preparing a page called Welcome Back, The Water Is Still Here.
A webpage cannot operate a pump, raise a road or dry a sock. It can put warnings and contact details in one place, which is considerably more useful than allowing every village noticeboard to become an amateur hydrology department with a damp marker pen.
Eventually the water may retreat, leaving the sites waiting patiently for their next assignment. Until then, the West Country has achieved a remarkable arrangement in which the ground is saturated, the sheds are nervous and the official response is impressively tidy online. Britain has finally put the flood on the internet, where it can be ignored with excellent documentation.
Source: Environment Agency.
