Overnight Flooding

The heavy rain during Monday 21st Nov and through the night has led to some temporary flooding at the Turnditch Orchard. Last night we had automated flood alert phone calls from the Environment Agency.

The River Ecclesbourne overtopped its banks at approximately 9:30 pm last night. A couple of hours the peak flow had passed and the waters receded in the river. The far end of the orchard close to the under road culvert had some flooding this morning. Our plum tree (Guinevere) currently has its "feet in water", let's hope the waters drain quickly and there's no lasting damage. We'll stay off the land for a week to prevent any soil compaction.

The river bank ladder would have been swept away in the torrent of water had I not planned for the floods and anchored it to a tree stump. At the moment it is laying on its side at the top of the river bank. Judging by the vegetation damage it looks as though the river level was about one metre higher than the top of the ladder.

Floods at the Turnditch Orchard project

We called in at the orchard site  this morning. The Ecclesbourne River has overflowed its banks and some of the land of the orchard has been flooded. Storm Katie dropped a lot of rain last night and the river level flashed up by 150cms. As a consequence some of the fruit trees have their "feet" in water. Flooding can kill the trees, we'll have to wait and see how they survive.  

Longer term it may be worth opening up the old drainage ditch which runs across the orchard. It is fed by the culvert which was built when the embankment for the railway bridge was formed. Previous owners of the land have filled in the ditch, which was present on maps prior to 1850. Perhaps an opportunity for the volunteer work force to drive a small back-hoe excavator one day!

Riparian owners in an orchard.

We did some research on the responsibilities and rights we gained when we took on the plot of land at the edge of the Ecclesbourne River. Officially at the place of our orchard it is a watercourse and not a river. The following is a summary and not necessarily correct legal advice on our part.

Riparian Owners 

You are known as a riparian owner if you own land or property adjacent to a watercourse. By virtue of being a riparian owner you have rights and responsibilities.

Your rights as a riparian owner are: 

• You are presumed to own the land up to the centre of the watercourse, unless it is known to be owned by others.
• You have the right to receive flow of water in its natural state, without undue interference in quantity or quality.
• You have the right to protect your property from flooding, and your land from erosion. You will in most cases need the prior consent of the Environment Agency and Local Authority for any works, however. In the case of The Ecclesbourne at Turnditch it is Derbyshire County Council.
• You have the right to fish in your watercourse, although this must be by legal methods and with an Environment Agency rod licence.
• Without needing a licence, you can abstract a maximum of 20 cubic metres of  water per day for the domestic purposes of your own household or for agricultural use, excluding spray irrigation, from a watercourse at a point that directly adjoins your land. Most other types of abstraction will require a licence from the Agency. 

Your responsibilities 

• You have the responsibility to pass on flow without obstruction, pollution or diversion affecting the rights of others. 
• You have the responsibility to accept flood flows through your land, even if caused by inadequate capacity downstream, as there is no common law duty to improve a watercourse.
• You are responsible for maintaining the bed and banks of the watercourse (including trees and shrubs growing on the banks), and for clearing any debris, natural or otherwise, including litter and animal carcasses, even if it did not originate from your land. 
• You must not cause any obstructions to the free passage of fish. 
• You are responsible for keeping the bed and banks clear of any matter that could cause an obstruction, either on your land or by being washed away by high flow to obstruct a structure downstream. Watercourses and their banks must not be used for the disposal of any form of garden or other waste. 
• You are responsible for keeping clear any structures that you own such as culverts, trash screens, weirs and mill gates. 
• You may have flood defences such as walls and embankments on your property, which are vital for the protection of both yourself and others. You should discuss the maintenance of such defences with the Environment Agency office. 
• You are responsible for protecting your property from seepage through natural or man-made banks. Where such seepage threatens the structural integrity of a flood defence, it may become the concern of the Environment Agency. 

Hedging started at the Orchard.

We called in at a local agricultural and building supplies merchant (Lester Lowe) yesterday afternoon to pick up a couple of bundles of fencing stakes. The merchant offers cracking good value for fencing timber. We'd calculated we'd need something in the order of 100 stakes. We plan to use some for staking the fruit trees and also providing fence enclosures for the trees. Our hedging contractor Adrian also mentioned he needed a few stakes. The stakes are rough sawn untreated wood about 1.5 metres in length and about 4 cm square. The first problem we faced was getting them to the site as we didn't want to hang around awaiting a delivery, so we took our Freelander car to the Lester Low site. With the back seats folded down we just managed to cram the 100 stakes into the back of the vehicle and squeeze the door shut.

Trees damaged by the sheep

We drove on to the Turnditch site to drop off the stakes. We found Adrian working on the site starting to clear some of the overgrown hedgerow ready for laying. He was quite concerned about the potential damage caused by the sheep chewing the bark of the bushes he'd cut down. They'd already damaged some hawthorn, but left the blackthorn alone. It looks like we need to install a temporary stock fence on our neighbours land to protect the hedge from the sheep for a few months. We've tried to contact the neighbouring farmer last night to discuss the options.  Oh the joys of restoring farmland, more expense!

Adrian also mentioned the gully under the embankment. His thoughts were that we could see some flood waters coming through from the other side of the road if the Ecclesbourne River flooded those fields with the heavy winter rains. He'd found the location where he was working had become quite boggy with the action of the sheep hooves and the wet conditions.

Will the site flood?

We did a brief site visit to assess the impact of the past few days of heavy rain. The River Ecclesbourne is now running fast and a lot deeper than its normal state.

However the river would need to rise about another metre before any flooding takes place, so at the moment no major worries.

Note 1/11/2013:

I have made a note later in the blog about river bank erosion. You can just see some of this erosion where the Elm sapling grows in the above picture. The bank are about 2 metres and pretty much vertical above the river bed. During the summer the edge of the river is only 5 cms deep so the spate condition must be at least a metre deep and fairly fast flowing. The opposite bank has some stonework and steps to provide access and some protection against erosion. The general state of neglect by the previous owner(s) of the field and river bank will need some remedial work to prevent further damage.