| On the 31st January 1953
three hundred people lost their lives when a surge tide
broke through the sea defences on England’s east
coast. Fifty years later, we ask the question, are we
due for another such disaster? Climate change is set to
re-shape the East Anglian coastline as our sea defences
are put under increasing pressure and the protective and
highly productive salt marsh is washed away. With an increasing
number of houses being protected by crumbling sea walls,
government spending on this particular line of defence
is being stretched thin. A controversial new scheme is
being pioneered at Abbotts Hall in Essex, which is being
overseen by Mark Dixon of the Environment Agency. His
vision is one of retreat: a section of sea wall has been
flattened, allowing the sea to reclaim the land. Mark
hopes the inundated farmland will revert to salt marsh
- an endangered habitat vital for our coastal wildlife.
But he has another theory: by giving the water a place
to go during a surge tide he can relieve the pressure
on the sea walls, protecting homes and industry, thus
avoiding a repeat of the devastating 1953 floods. The
Abbotts Hall scheme will provide the data that will either
support or destroy his theory and could determine the
fate of England’s east coast. |
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| Since
long before 1953 the coastline of Essex has been
defined by mile upon mile of sea wall, but in the
past this gentle landscape had a natural defence
against the sea: a strip of salt marsh. The highest
tides would wash over this salt marsh, but now the
sea is kept at bay by the sea walls. This strip
of land that used to belong to the sea we have claimed
as our own. We have drained it; we grow crops here;
we live here. But ever since the first walls went
up, the sea has been trying to reclaim the land. |
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