Don't be silly, it has nothing to do with climate change. It was just as wet in 1910 and there was no "climate change" then. Its just weather, it happens now and again. Anyone that thinks its caused by climate change needs to look at the facts and stop being an alarmist when something normal but not very frequent happens.
Do what they do around here, put the elderly in the flats. They don't have a problem as long as you maintain the lifts. You convert some of the flats to community areas so they can have bingo nights and such. The ones I know are quite happy with them.
In Houston, which IME is nothing but a flood plain, they scoop out lakes and use the removed soil to build up the surrounding area, which they then build on using raft foundations. The Heights in Houston which I've seen, seems to be about 3 ft higher than the rest of the place. If you design the roads to be canals when it rains, then the water can be diverted to the designated drainage areas without any severe problems. I've seen dips in the roads go to 6 feet under water when it rains for a couple of hours, yet they clear a few hours later. Thers's nothing difficult about solving the problem, you just have to have the will.
A lot of the poblem is that this is an artificial environment and it takes constant artificial means to maintain it. But as you say no simple answers and a different answer in different places.
I have yet to be convinced that what seems to be the almost universal mantra of 'dredging' would have solved the flooding on the Somerset Levels, bearing in mind that AIUI the main drainage rivers and their embankments are above the level of the surrounding fields, water doesn't drain uphill, and those rivers are still capable of taking away all the water that's being pumped into them.
Yes, I accept that the water has to drain off the land to points from which it can be pumped, and that the ditches and dykes feeding those pumping points need to be kept open and in good condition, but the long-term answer is surely to have permanent pumping capacity, adequate to cope with situations such as exist at the moment. Only when the main drainage rivers are no longer able to take the pumped water away would dredging to widen or deepen them be appropriate, and AIUI that point hasn't been reached yet.
Or have I, sitting comfortably in my armchair hundreds of miles from the Levels, missed something?
In a lot of streets built by the Victorians, they'd dig down about three or four feet to make the cellar, and pile up the spoil and compact it down to make the road, giving a seven- foot cellar. That's certainly how most of the (rare) level roads in Sheffield were built so that the road didn't slope from one side to the other.
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