Dawlish News
VOLUNTEERS working to clear the waterway in Dawlish are due to start work on lower parts of the Brook. WADE - Waterways Around the Dawlish Environment - was set up last year to organise teams of volunteers to tackle the Brook in response to concerns over the state of the town’s waterway.
Read more...https://www.middevonadvertiser.co.uk/news/work-continues-to-clear-town-waterway-799721
I am not clear what this group intends to do. Will the islands that have formed over recent years still be left in place to grow even larger, and is this just some kind of cosmetic sop because the LibDumb council has no interest in restoring the brook?
If volunteers are being used to replace paid workers to clear our waterways, then we should get a Council tax reduction. Hell why don't all these comfortably off, retired, middle class volunteers clean the public loos and collect our waste if they're as keen as mustard. Or are they all just there as 'extras' in another Lib Dem staged photo opportunity?
The problem is that Dawlish Water was canalized over two hundred years ago when the lawn area was basically a marsh called Tunnicliffe Waste. And now increased rainfall and the lack of vegetation in the Ashcombe and Luscombe valleys due to farming means it's always going to clog up with silt from erosion. The landscape is void of trees and shrubs to stop flooding, re-wilding the steep valleys and introducing Beavers would save the taxpayers millions. Farming is the problem and we're all subsidizing farms so they stay in business, we're funding the source of the problem.The watercourse is just trying to return to marshland, it's starts by filling up the canalized brook.