Potter's Weal

In November of 2003, I was in Tortola for the Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute meeting  which was practically washed out by massive rains which did a lot of damage. They were described as 100-year rains (exclusive of tropical storms).

Caption: November 2003 Flooding and Sediment Run-off in Cane Garden Bay

This past week, Judith Towle and Jean Pierre Bacle were in the BVI working on several projects and many of their activities were washed out by massive rains, said to be the equal of the November 2003 storms. 

The article below from the Herald in Scotland, which also suffered from massive storms explains why we can expect a LOT more of these major storms.

The INCREASING FREQUENCY of storms also suggests why construction and erosion and sediment control measures MUST be increased.

Devastation on a ‘Biblical’ scale: is this a glimpse of the future for the UK?

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• The destroyed brige in Cumbria

Chris Watt

Published on 21 Nov 2009

The “biblical” floods that have wreaked havoc across parts of Britain will become more common in future as global weather patterns change, forecasters warn.

North-western England sank yesterday under the heaviest rainfall ever seen in Britain, with more than a foot recorded in just 24 hours at a weather station in Seathwaite, Cumbria.

Hundreds of residents were evacuated as rising water laid waste to towns and farmland, and the RAF scrambled helicopters to offer aid to the worst-hit areas.

The downpour has devastated the town of Cockermouth, just south of the Scottish border, where more than 200 locals have been forced to flee their homes for safety. Two rivers have burst their banks in the area, sending millions of gallons of rainwater flowing through the main streets and leaving vehicles and businesses submerged.

Red Cross worker Ian Rideout said large numbers of people were suffering from shock, and that the centre of Cockermouth “looks like it has been completely destroyed”.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “The water has caused so much damage that many of the homes here are completely ruined.

“We’ve been working non-stop and between the Red Cross and RNLI we’ve rescued in the region of 200 people from their homes.

“Most of the people we’ve rescued have been in shock. One minute it’s raining heavily, then the next their home is filling with water and they’re being evacuated by the Red Cross.”

Mr Rideout led a crew from northern Scotland to tackle the flooding, aided by two boats and nine rescue vehicles.

Local resident Alan Smith said the townspeople were worried by forecasts of more rain into the weekend, even though the water level was falling yesterday afternoon. At one point it reached eight feet deep in some parts of the town.

He said: “It’s come down four feet from last night, but the fells are sodden and if we get any more rain, it will just come straight off and into the river and the level will rise again.

“If we have persistent rain like last night and the day before, we will be back to square one.”

The Met Office said the rainfall that was seen in north-western England over the past three days had broken historical records, and the 12.5 inches that hit Seathwaite in just 24 hours was the heaviest downfall recorded in the UK since records began in 1914.

Though the latest weather conditions, described as “a historical event” by MeteoGroup forecaster Julian Mayes, could not be blamed entirely on climate change, experts have warned that such freak occurrences are likely to become normal in the years to come.

Describing the flooding as being of “biblical proportions”, Mr Mayes said: “The fact that there’s eight feet of water in some places is not that surprising.

“Primarily, it’s the sheer quantity in the last 36 hours that has caused the flooding. But in November the ground is saturated. The rain can’t get into the soil, it just runs off. That means rivers rise very quickly and suddenly.”

Chris Bell, a forecaster at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, agreed that a direct link should not be made between the floods and global warming.

“It’s probably not good practice scientifically to blame single weather events on climate change,” he said.

“That being said, if the globe is indeed warming, you’re going to have more heat in the atmosphere. We know that air that is warm is able to carry more water vapour. There is certainly the potential that we could have heavy rain events more commonly in the future.”.

Dr Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, said the flooding underlined the need for a strong deal at the Copenhagen conference on climate change in December.

“In England this is being called a thousand-year flood, but climate change will make that much more common,” he said. “It’s now just a question of how bad it will get. If we don’t get good reduction measures, it will get worse.”

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By MITCHELLE STEPHENSON For The Capital

COMMUNITY – SOUTH COUNTY

Published 11/05/09

Kincey Potter has been in front of and behind the scenes at the South River Federation since 2003. Last week she was awarded the Unsung Hero award from the Maryland Association of Fundraising Professionals at a reception in Baltimore.

Potter was nominated for the award by Keith Campbell, who is president of the Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment.

Last November, Campbell was recognized as Maryland Outstanding Philanthropist of the Year for his work on behalf of preserving the Chesapeake Bay. As a recipient of the award, Campbell had an opportunity to nominate someone whom he felt should be recognized as an unsung hero.

Potter was not the founder of the South River Federation, a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect, restore and celebrate Maryland’s South River watershed. However, she is credited with taking the organization from a small volunteer group to a staffed nonprofit with a full-time riverkeeper.

When Potter started with the organization in 2003, she’d just retired from American Management Systems, where she was a vice president managing large software systems.

She said that she wanted to get involved “in something to do with the waterways and saving the Bay.”

Potter began as a volunteer, then got into fundraising, and is now the president of the South River Federation, based in Edgewater.

“I was working with a lot of different companies (prior to retirement), figuring out what kinds of software and systems would make businesses stronger. Working with volunteer organizations is very similar in that you have to get people moving in the right direction,” Potter said.

Although the South River Federation had existed off and on prior to 1999, that was the year the group was reconstituted and began its current path of advocacy and river monitoring work.

The history of championing the health of rivers isn’t particularly old. One of the first organizations to advocate on behalf of healthy waterways was on the Hudson River.

In 1966, a group of fishermen worked together to halt construction of a Consolidated Edison power plant upriver from West Point, N.Y. Although the court case took years to resolve, one of the group’s lasting efforts was that they had a riverkeeper, first a volunteer and by 1983, a full-time paid employee, to monitor the health of the river.

By 1999, the idea of having riverkeepers monitor the health of a river had caught on, and the Waterkeeper’s Alliance was born. That group is an association of over 200 riverkeepers across America. There are currently three in Anne Arundel County alone: South Riverkeeper, West/Rhode Riverkeeper and Severn Riverkeeper.

The effort of ensuring that the South River watershed employs a full-time riverkeeper as well as a staff of professionals, including a program coordinator and an executive director is a product of Potter’s efforts to build the South River Federation.

Each year the organization tracks the health of the river through programs that involve not only the efforts of the riverkeeper, but also scores of volunteers. They participate in events like the watershed snapshot, where water quality, bacteria andother data are monitored at the same time in dozens of locations in both the tidal and non-tidal areas of the South River.

In addition, the South River Federation supports communities in the creation of living shorelines, rain gardens, wetlands restoration and oyster gardening.

“I was very surprised and very honored, and especially pleased to have been nominated by Keith Campbell, because he has done so much to clean up our waters and the bay,” Potter said after winning the award.

Other local winners included Capt. Anthony P. Barnes, nominated by Anne Arundel County Public Schools for his work in creating a mentoring program employing Naval Academy students, and Carol Milli, nominated by Partners in Care for her outstanding service to seniors in the county.

Mitchelle Stephenson is a freelance writer living in Edgewater.

No problem — UNLESS of course we do not have the legal and policy framework to claim new lands inland for NEW MARSHES, as the seas come in — we do, don’t we?  I mean we wouldn’t ignore that fundamental issue, would we?

… oh

http://www.surfbirds.com/sbirdsnews/archives/2009/10/salt_marsh_bird.html