Dredging Begins On Flood-Hit Somerset Levels
The eight-month operation will see up to 400,000 tonnes of mud and silt removed in a bid to avoid a repeat of the winter floods.

The locals have waited decades for this. Diggers are slowly clawing away years of silt that many blame for the winter's floods. For the Environment Agency, it's a chance to rebuild trust.
The extra funding is really making this possible as come forward from government and 5 million pounds will be spending on the dredging. It's gonna be money well-spent, I think both in terms of reduce flood risks and in terms of shortening the arms of local community during the recovery stage.
It won't be easy after things after this. For weeks, the W family could only sail up to their front door. Their home and cattlefarm was submerged under feet of water, they've already asked for the waters to be cleared.
There is an element of distrust, because lord Smith said to me a year and a bit ago that something on the top of paramount, that something will be done within 6 months, well, not, it didn't.
A wider twenty-year plan includes better pumping capacity to move any flood water and a barrage near bridge water to control the tidal rivers. All to try and prevent this happening again. F's home wasn't even flooded when they started campaigning, now it has to be gutted.
Diggers are there, the excavating things are there on site, but they are doing is * rather than a great big dollop.
From watching the progress on day one, this is clearly going to be a slow and laborious job, but they are going to have about eight of these different sites set up along that 8-kilometer stretch of the River P and the River A, hoping to clear in total between 300,000 and 400,000 tons of silt and mud.
Still costing the country billions of bounds are the floods that visit the low levels after heavy rains.
For years, this area has been fighting flooding from 1943 to 2014, the same problems with similar imperfect solutions. Now this is a small victory for those who demanded these rivers should be dredged. That with more funding needed, they will continue to fight to make sure their precious piece of summer set is better protected for the future.