Flood risk in Wales

Graham Henry in the South Wales Echo: Cardiff could suffer annual flooding later this century if defences are not improved, a report has warned. The Environment Agency Wales has warned that without flood-defence improvements, rising seas could cause damaging floods to towns along the Severn Estuary by 2060, including Cardiff, Penarth and Newport.

Plans identified Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan at particular risk, while there are risk points identified all along the estuary to Gloucestershire, which includes around 250,000 homes. The report said that, in Penarth, there was a 20% chance each year that waves could rise above the sea wall and cause damage to buildings.

It also identifies increased risk of storms in both Penarth and Cardiff – with the Agency warning that Cardiff could face catastrophic annual flooding within 100 years if defences were not improved. Even with proposed raising of embankments in Cardiff by 0.8m, there would still be a one-in-200 risk of flooding to around 10,000 homes.

The report said: “Flood risk will increase as sea levels rise and storms become worse. Even if the existing defence structures were maintained at their current height, by 2060 the risk of tidal flooding will increase to a one-in-50 chance of flooding in any year.”…

Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan, shot by Penny Mayes, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Unported license