Exercise Watermark
blots our copybook

With timing so faultlessly bad that it almost seemed intentionally provocative, Boston Borough Council chose last Friday to tell us that “a 1,000-year flood hit Boston last week leaving chaos and devastation in its wake.
“Up to 2,500 people were left in need of rescue and the Pilgrim Hospital had to be evacuated as gale force eight winds piled up a North Sea surge which burst through the banks of The Haven.”
Meanwhile, half a world away, victims of the Japanese tsunami were being washed away in their tens of thousands in a natural disaster unparalleled since records began.
Even with the reassurance locally that “fortunately the flood, anticipated to occur only once in a thousand years and worse than that which hit the east coast in 1953, was all an exercise to put to the test in as realistic terms as possible, the emergency plans of Boston Borough Council and other organisations” the decision to publish the story on the council website seemed remarkably crass and insensitive.
Regardless of the atrocious timing, and the trumpeting of a faux disaster whilst the real thing was claiming lives in the most horrific way, the episode again underlines Boston’s ambivalence towards the issue of flooding.
The view that appears to be taken by the Borough Council that because this overly theatrical exercise attracted national press and TV coverage “and a ministerial and royal visit” this was a good thing.
One of those events that “puts Boston on the map.”
In fact is does quite the opposite.
It puts Boston in the spotlight as being an area at risk of serious flooding – an area where it is unsafe to relocate to.
An area where is it dangerous to live.
An area where any sensible insurance company will refuse to offer cover.
A “thousand year flood” does not mean that we can breathe easily until 3011.

It could happen tomorrow, and developers thinking of building their shopping centres and housing estates know this perfectly well.

The ceaseless message that has been delivered in recent months is that Boston is a place that is safer now from flood risk than it has ever been.

Who could forget Boston 200 – which was rammed down our collective throats by Council Leader Richard Austin to try to persuade us that flooding in the borough was now little more than a memory.

We have an £8.5 million lock link to act as the tidal flood defence for Boston.
Then there’s the £50 million flood barrier which will improve the odds on flooding in Boston from a two per cent probability of flooding from a tidal surge – a one in 50 chance - in any year to 0.33 percent probability – a one in 300 chance.
It’s only a few days since Boston’s head of planning and strategy denounced claims in The Guardian newspaper that the borough had one of the highest risks of flooding in the country. He said the risk was “very low indeed” and set to improve when the Boston Barrier is competed.
Now, for the sake of a little cheap publicity, Boston is back in poll position on the flood maps – and if we suffer as a result, we only have ourselves to blame.
It just takes one developer to change his mind about locating to Boston because of a perceived flood risk for the borough potentially to lose hundreds of jobs and dozens of new homes.

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