The power of nature in devastating force.
A month ago, communities across Scotland were hit by the worst
floods in living memory.
Hello and a very warm welcome to a special edition of Landward.
We'll be exploring the effects of the flood and investigating
what can be done to reduce the risks of further flooding.
Deeside was one of the areas worst hit by the flood and here,
on Ballater's main street, you can
still see the evidence five weeks on.
Businesses, homes and farms were all ruined,
and later, we'll be meeting some of those affected.
Sarah visits the farmer who battled to save his sheep.
We'd 101 washed away and there's been nine turned up,
so 92, I'm afraid, have succumbed to the flood.
Also, Euan takes to the road to examine the dredging debate.
And I find out how harnessing nature can help prevent flooding.
First, here's a guide to how events unfolded.
For Scotland, the whole of 2015 was categorised by rain...
..lots and lots of rain.
We suffered a wash-out summer with parts of the country almost
twice as wet as normal.
In July, the torrential rain struck Alyth in Perthshire.
Cars were swept away and home
and business owners were left counting the cost of the downpour.
But it was the end of the year which brought
the start of the widespread misery.
December 2015 was the wettest month since UK records began.
Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders were hit first,
taking the brunt of Storm Desmond's fearsome power.
The River Nith at Whitesands in Dumfries burst its banks.
And homes in Hawick were evacuated after the River Teviot
suffered a similar fate.
Then, four days after Christmas,
it was Storm Frank's turn to wreak havoc across the country.
In Aberdeenshire,
part of A93 collapsed into the swollen River Dee.
In Newton Stewart, the Cree reached its highest level since 1963.
Viewer footage shows the consequences.
But the incident which probably sticks in most people's minds -
passengers had to be rescued from a bus in Dailly, South Ayrshire,
after it became trapped by the floods.
And there's been no relief from the flooding misery in the New Year.
There were dramatic rescues in Port Elphinstone in Aberdeenshire.
And nearly three weeks later,
Hawick was evacuated again as rain continued to pound the Borders.
Across Scotland, people are counting the cost of the damage.
But it was perhaps Ballater on Deeside that was hit hardest.
Just a few days after the flood, Sarah visited the town.
On 30th December, Ballater was overwhelmed by flood water
when the River Dee burst its banks.
For many residents,
returning home to the aftermath has been a distressing experience.
So my shed - it was tipped up.
Everything inside, as you can see, has just been trashed.
- We've lost everything. Yeah. - We'll have a look inside the house? - Yeah.
Please.
Gordon Duff recently moved to the community to
enjoy his retirement and he's just finished renovating his new home.
- You can see from the water mark... - So the water was about waist high?
- Yeah. - And then, just everything inside was ruined? - Total.
Everything's gone.
This is a brand-new kitchen. It's just completely trashed.
- Completely trashed. - How are you feeling about this?
I'm absolutely devastated.
It's just all...
I'm heartbroken because 30 odd years of mementos, photographs
of the grandchildren and the boys growing up - it's all gone now.
Yeah. I know that...
They say it's only bricks and mortar,
we can put that right but, I mean, it was our home and it's just gone.
The floods hit the main street with remarkable speed,
and a week later, shops and businesses are still devastated.
- John, morning. - Hello. - Sarah. How are you doing? - How are you?
- Are you mid clear-up? - Yes.
'John Sinclair has worked at the local butcher's for over
'three decades.'
How much damage was there?
Everything, total devastation throughout the shop.
There's nothing left at all. The walls have got to come down as well.
I mean, the water level was up to there, that height,
on the day of it.
Have you calculated how much this has all cost?
- It's going to be well over 500,000. - £500,000? - I would say so, anyway.
They've got to refit the place. Even the stock...
£50,000 of stock I've binned.
- I'm just devastated. - And you're not alone cos, you know,
walking down the street is just a scene of devastation everywhere.
I mean, every business seems to have been affected.
Every business in the bottom half of the village is shut.
However, nowhere shows the destructive power of the flood
more clearly than the scene
at Ballater's community-run caravan park.
I've never seen anything like this before.
This is what remains of Ballater Caravan Park which was
one of the busiest tourist sites in the village.
And last week, this whole area was under six feet of water.
Volunteer Gordon Bruce helps to manage the park.
How important was this caravan park to the village?
Oh, I think it was very important, brought a lot of tourists and
they spent money in the shops, the restaurants and whatever, you know.
- So it's a big loss for the village? - Well, I think it is, you know.
If it didn't open this next year, it's a disaster, really.
Are you optimistic about the future?
Do you see yourselves reopening fairly quickly?
Well, I think a little bit of help from Aberdeenshire Council and
we could at least get the touring side up and going again, you know.
We're in a good enough position but we couldn't
possibly afford to rebuild everything as it is just now.
It's just the whole structure of this site's been ruined.
The caravans of everyone's virtually ruined, 40 of them down the river.
- We've got 60 odd left. - Any of them salvageable?
Well, I think it's...one person said they had one,
but the rest have all been shifted.
I don't think any of them really will be.
It's just a total mess.
- Do you have insurance? - No.
They won't give you insurance in a flood plain.
Ballater wasn't alone in being hit.
All along the Dee, communities and farms were affected.
And normally, how far are you from the river?
- Well, you can just see it if you... - I can just see it.
'35 miles downstream,
'I met Jane McInnis to see the damage done to her deer farm.'
One fence lying on its back, completely destroyed.
This fence was going along the river.
It's been completely moved, covered in debris.
And also, all the banking has gone.
We knew it was coming in at the east end of the farm.
We didn't worry about this
because this has always held the river in his place.
But then suddenly, we realised it had started to breach the banks.
You know, you can see the water's subsided
- and just the damage it's left behind - this massive crater. - Yep.
- And there's one over there as well. - That's right.
The bank has just been totally eroded by the power of the water.
We got the sheep off with less than half an hour to spare
and we got the deer into a holding pen.
But then, we stood up on the bank and watched,
and it was just terrifying.
How does this flood compare to previous ones?
Oh, this is way ahead of the other floods in the damage it's done
and the speed with which it came through.
I think that was the most terrifying thing - it happened so fast.
And there was very little anybody could do. What can you do?
Got the animals off but it was... No, no.
This is something on a different scale, Sarah, totally.
And that's what worries me for the future of living near a river like this -
is this going to be something that is happening much more often?
- It really is Mother Nature in full force, isn't it? - Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. And there's not a thing we can do about it here.
While the storm has destroyed much of the farm,
Jane did not lose any livestock.
Sheep farmer Rodney Blackhall was not so lucky.
Just tell us what happened to this field.
Well, it went from being a nice dry field,
and Wednesday 30th, December, there to an absolute raging torrent.
And the river rose about six metres
and there was full-sized trees taken through here.
Did you have livestock in the field?
We had sheep in that field that, unfortunately,
weren't at the right side of this torrent.
This footage shows Rodney and his friends
and family frantically trying to move the sheep to safety.
We'd 101 washed away and there's been nine turned up,
downstream, miraculously have survived being in the water.
- So 92, I'm afraid, have succumbed to the flood. - I mean, I know...
You know, farmers are dedicated to their livestock, to their flock.
I mean, how must that have felt?
Well, that's why we were in there, up to our waists,
beside the trees up there, trying to save them
because you spend all your time, from the time they're born,
trying to look after them and make the best of them,
and yeah, to see them going away, down the river,
was quite heartbreaking, to be honest.
A terrible thing for any farmer to have to deal with.
Yeah, well, it's quite a sickener
when you're sticking at lambing and hoping to get anything alive.
And you get them through to that stage
and then they're taken away from you like that.
And what about the future?
Well, farmers tend to be that you've just to pick up the pieces
and get on, don't you? Otherwise, we would all be back down long by now.
So yeah, we'll do our best to just carry on.
The floods obviously caused serious and lasting consequences
for many people, but why did they happen and why so severe?
We sent Euan to Ellon in search of some answers.
This is the River Ythan in Ellon.
Now, it doesn't look much at the moment. It's quite swollen.
But in January, this river burst its banks
and this whole area was under water.
And I'm with Richard Brown of
the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, SEPA.
And it's their job to monitor the water levels
and to issue flood warnings.
Now, Richard, I know Ellon wasn't alone in being hit by the deluge
but why so much rain?
Really, a series of very intense Atlantic storms,
generating way out in the Atlantic,
moving up from the South West into Scotland and right
up across Scotland from Dumfries and Galloway, the Borders, Tayside.
Then in January, what we saw was the wind direction shifting around
and we saw a lot of rain coming in off the North Sea.
That was perhaps a longer-duration event.
It extended over several days.
Now, we had quite a mild December.
Did that have an impact on the flooding?
December was exceptionally mild.
It was about five degrees warmer than average across the UK
and that is really exceptional.
Sometimes you may get a month is a degree warmer
but to have it five degrees warmer than average is quite something.
That meant there wasn't a great deal of snow.
The snow that did come didn't tend to last.
It melted and that had to come down the rivers as well.
So it's raining but why flooding?
What's the circumstances that produce floods,
you know, the whole area under water? What happens to make that?
Well, basically, with the amount of rain we've had,
it's just saturated the ground.
The ground is absolutely sodden, reservoirs are full, rivers running
high, constantly being topped up, and that water just has to run off.
There's nowhere else for it to go.
How bad was the flooding in relation to previous years?
It was quite exceptional. I don't tend to use the word unprecedented.
Big floods always have occurred, always will occur, but really,
in our gauged record, in other words, the period that we've had
these recordings for, they were pretty exceptional.
The like of the Tay, for example, the second-highest on record
in that period, the River Dee, by far the highest on record.
But bear in mind that big floods have always occurred.
So, for example, there's well-documented history of flooding,
the great Moray floods of 1829, and it is fairly clear that some
of the floods then were much bigger than we've seen in recent days.
So you're not a betting man
but there's a fair chance this is going to happen again?
I would say so, yes.
I think there's every likelihood we will always get more flooding,
and indeed, quite likely to get bigger ones in future.
So, if it's going to happen again, what can we do about it?
In the Borders, on one of the tributaries of the Tweed,
the locals are turning to something called natural flood management.
For centuries, people have been manipulating Scotland's landscape.
We've drained the land to make it more productive,
created flood banks to protect crops
and straightened out rivers to make way for roads and railways.
We've created an environment where water runs downstream really,
really quickly.
Natural flood management is all about slowing things down.
I've come to meet Hugh Chalmers by Eddleston Water.
- Hugh, how are you? - Hi, Dougie.
Good to see you.
His group, the Tweed Forum, are working with nature to try
and protect Peebles from flooding.
- So Eddleston Water is a tributary of the Tweed? - Of the Tweed.
- That's right. - OK. - It hits the Tweed at Peebles. - Right.
Tell me about this project, then. What are you doing here?
- Well, we're looking at the whole of the Eddleston catchment. - Uh-huh.
The Scottish Government's funding this project specifically to see
if natural flood management actually works in real life.
So this whole catchment is 70 square km.
Peebles is down at the bottom here and the river runs about...
The main stem river runs about 20km.
So how much of a problem has there been with Eddleston Water
in the past, then?
Well, Eddleston Water runs through the village of Eddleston,
and Peebles actually floods about 300 properties.
So there is a flooding problem here.
And we're using natural features in the catchment to
slow down the water.
This is what's known as a leaky dam.
And the group have installed more than 50 of them
to slow the stream's progress towards the main river.
They've also planted 160 acres of woodland
and I'm helping Hugh replace the trees that have died off.
So how can planting little saplings like that, Hugh, help prevent,
or help to prevent, flooding further downstream?
Well, it will take a bit of time,
but once a tree starts to grow, this is a well-grown older tree here,
once they start to grow, they do various things.
They can actually intercept the rainfall, OK?
Then if the leaves are out,
- there's evapotranspiration that's sucking up the water. - Uh-huh.
So they use up a lot of water.
It also helps the rainfall to infiltrate into the soil
so the soil can then act as a reservoir.
- The stream's only ten metres away there. - Yeah.
The water will take a long time to get here through the trees, a
lot longer than it would than, say, through if it was just grazing land.
- Yeah. - And that's very similar to Sir Walter Scott.
He mentioned that back in the 1800s.
He said what they were doing by draining the uplands was
converting, like a thatched roof into a slate roof,
so the water runs off really quickly.
And they had noticed that in the Tweed way back in the 1820s.
The river was responding really quickly to high
rainfall in the uplands. And that was upsetting their fishing.
Yeah. So if it comes off the uplands really quickly,
- potential problems downstream very quickly. - Yeah. Exactly.
- And this is slowing it down? - That's right.
As well as planting trees and creating leaky dams,
the Tweed Forum have done what's called remeandering to this river.
It used to run poker straight alongside the old railway.
Now they've put the wiggles back.
This is the re-meandered Eddleston Water in summer.
The team have added to the length of the river
simply by putting curves back in,
slowing the flow of water towards Peebles.
So this is the once-straight river?
- No more. - That's it, Dougie. Yeah, yeah, quite different.
Some of the work was carried out on farmer Kenny Watson's land.
So, why did you get involved with this in the first place?
Well, when Tweed Forum approached us,
we were quite happy to get involved.
- This is an area of ground that's sort of wetland. - Mm-hm.
And this was quite suitable for us.
I mean, better ground, it wouldn't have been suitable on,
because, really, letting the water go laterally, spread out laterally,
you know, might not be best on better agricultural land.
- And were you compensated for this work? - Not directly financially, no.
But one thing that they have helped us out with is fencing,
bordering the ground and put in improved drainage here and there.
There's no doubt in my mind we're likely to get worse floods in future
and, if this helps to sort of, um, you know,
prevent some of it or even improve the outcome, then we're all for it.
Last December, Peebles DID flood.
but the Tweed was responsible, not Eddleston Water.
It looks as though the work is paying off.
However, it's still too early to say for sure.
So, the Tweed Forum will continue to study
the effects of these techniques and they're not the only ones.
It's not just here in the Borders where people are trying to
harness nature to prevent flooding. As Sarah's been finding out,
similar work is going on in the north-east.
Here on Deeside, on the farms around Tarland, a number of
different natural flood management techniques are being tested.
- So, how old is this bund? - This bund? Um, coming up to two years.
Dr Mark Wilkinson from the James Hutton Institute
is showing me a bund.
You're walking on top of a soil bund.
What we could say is a raised buffered strip.
It's about 50 centimetres high of earth and two metres wide.
And how does it work?
Well, basically, we have one field and,
when the soil gets too full of water,
what we want to do here is break that water and slow the flow
and stop it running into the houses down here.
- Then, so this... I see a pipe. - This pipe's important,
because what we're trying to do is to drain the water from this field,
for one day after the event, so the field does not become
waterlogged and the farmer can still grow his crops here,
so this is sort of a pipe that slowly allows the water to
drain out into this wetland system here.
Just like the Eddleston project,
it's about slowing the natural flow of the water.
Although a single bund proved no match for January's deluge,
the aim is to create lots of bunds to prevent
this sort of flooding in Tarland.
What if we...? We have one field, one small bund.
What if we were to replicate that across the whole catchment?
Each field, so work in the small pockets,
small wet areas of the farmer's field,
which they're willing maybe to give up, um,
and then they can farm the rest of the field,
so it's trying to work in the areas that we can.
Mark has worked on the project with Simon Power, estate manager
at the MacRobert Trust, which owns much of the land in the catchment.
With the agreement of the tenant farmer, they built the bund
in a couple of days with machinery they already had.
From an estate point of view,
- I mean, you would prefer to find a natural method like this...? - Yes.
- ..than hard engineering? - Yes, the big question that Mark and I
have been discussing is how many of these sorts of schemes would we need
in order to make it comparable with a massive scheme that
Aberdeenshire Council had talked about doing in the Howe of Cromar,
which would affect two farm tenants, but would've held
an enormous amount of water and probably meant that
they couldn't have grown barley any more,
cos they would've had to have grass fields on a permanent basis.
So the hope is that,
if we have a number of these schemes dotted about the estate,
that they could all add up to something of a similar capacity.
As well as a bund, rough grass strips
have been planted with trees along the Tarland burn.
These help to slow the flow of water off the fields.
Large storage ponds, like this one, have also been created.
What will it take for schemes like this to be
- replicated across the country? - I guess two things, really.
Firstly, look for opportunistic areas like this -
wet areas in the corner of fields farmers are willing to give up -
because they're wet anyway. But secondly,
if we are going to take farmland out of production,
we need to look at parent mechanisms, through farm subsidies,
to try and compensate farmers to store larger volumes of water.
Experts, including Mark, say natural flood management projects
can never replace large flood defence schemes.
But they are relatively cheap in comparison
and do have an important role to play.
What do you think? If you have any thoughts on flooding
and how we deal with it, share them via our Facebook page,
or send us an e-mail to...
Now, here's Euan in Perth.
As we've heard, natural flood management
can only be part of the solution.
It can never replace the need for what's called hard engineering.
For example, flood defences, like here in Perth.
As the level rises, these gates are closed
to prevent the Tay from spilling over
and, in total, over £25 million has been spent
protecting the fair city from flooding.
Perth's defences were built after these floods in 1993,
When thousands of homes were affected
and the authorities were forced to act.
During Storms Desmond and Frank, only five homes were inundated
and this was due to the drains being overwhelmed.
The river didn't flood.
Now the Scottish Government has committed to spending
£235 million on flood defence schemes across the country.
But should we also be letting
landowners do more of their own flood protection work?
Some farmers are saying that even more could be achieved
if the authorities would free them up from red tape and let them
carry out work on their own land, including dredging the river.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency allows farmers
to dredge small stretches of river in certain circumstances.
Most work, though, needs a licence
and that can be difficult to get hold of.
That swept down the river from further upstream.
Andrew Bauer from the National Farmers' Union of Scotland
wants this to change. I'm meeting him on a farm by the Tay,
where the river breached its banks.
This field here, we have winter wheat.
That may be salvageable, although there's obviously damage.
Over here, we have about 14-15 hectares of carrots.
About 1,000 tonnes would be expected out of a field like that,
enough for a million bags of carrots.
- Oh, that's just gone in a couple of days? - Gone.
- Obviously, you want to repair this wall... - Yeah.
..in the flood defences, but what else do you want to happen?
Well, this is what's called prime agricultural land and only 3%
of Scotland's agricultural land is prime agricultural land.
This is where our vegetables, food, comes from, apart from red meat,
so we think it's important that this type of land be protected,
so that farmers should have the ability to strengthen
flood defences, heighten flood defences and, in the rivers -
you know, this is the Tay, it's a heavily-protected river -
it's appropriate that it continues to have a level of protection,
but we need to have better working between SEPA and farmers
to identify what the solutions are
and, if it's not a designated part of the river, and there is
a pinch point in the river, where you have gravel bars building up,
we need options for farmers to be able to remove those
and remove them responsibly.
An entire crop of carrots ruined - a terrible waste.
But would dredging have made any difference?
David Harley from SEPA isn't convinced.
In many cases, when it comes to large-scale floods,
dredging has a negligible impact on mitigating that flood.
For example, we know there were studies done in Perth
and they worked out that, if you removed large-scale sediment
and gravels - I think the figure was 40,000 tons -
it would take two inches off that flood height.
- That won't make much difference, will it? - Negligible, in many cases.
Is it a difficult one to sell to farmers who, you know,
they're looking at fields underwater?
They want to get rid of it as quickly as possible!
Yeah, I can see that, particularly after times of, you know,
serious inundation and serious crop damage. You know, emotions are high.
And we are here to... Actually, SEPA is here to help farmers in that.
If people want to make repairs to breached flood embankments,
we can help them with that.
They can actually do that without authorisation.
There is small-scale dredging they can do without authorisation
as well, so they should really come and talk to us.
I know there's a fear factor about coming and talking to SEPA,
but we really urge farmers to come and speak to us.
We do need to, you know, on one level,
help farmers where it does add benefit, but on another level,
make sure that we don't create worse problems further downstream
for communities, for other farmers, um, and for wildlife.
No doubt the debate over dredging will continue.
In the meantime, those affected by flooding
are still picking up the pieces.
But don't forget, if your business or your home has been
affected by flooding, then you are entitled to a grant of £1,500.
To apply for the grant, you need to contact your local authority.
Well, that almost brings us to the end of the programme,
but we couldn't go without mentioning the one good news story
to emerge from all this misery, and that's how
communities pulled together and rallied to help each other.
Community halls were converted to emergency centres.
Sites sprang up on social media to connect people and offer aid.
And everyone pitched in
to help their neighbours get back on their feet.
It seems that, when Mother Nature does her worst,
human nature is at its best.
Landward will be back on the air just after Easter.
In the meantime, from all of us,
thanks for your company, bye for now.