The Severn estuary (with help from it’s surfing community) has been covering the media with stunning images of one of its biggest tidal bores for years - getting a five star rating.
The Severn bore is but one of the wonders of this special place – you can read more about them here. The Severn – along with the UK’s other great estuaries - lives to the pulse of the tides. The ebb and flow governs what makes these places special.
A couple of weeks ago the RSPB hosted a visit by two experts from the Netherlands – they have been studying the impact of the construction of a tidal surge barrier across the Eastern Scheldt estuary in the early 1980s. The impacts are profound, damaging and costly – even when the original objective, in this case preventing storm surges, is met. The impacts go beyond (though include) the damage to bird populations and directly threatened to undermine coastal flood defences as the erosive forces of the estuary take hold as it fights to establish a new equilibrium – the Dutch call this sand hunger.
The lessons are transferable to the Severn and other major estuaries currently the subject of tidal energy studies or proposals – we shared this information with the tidal energy community (you can find the report here – it’s the top down-load) and urged that these lessons are built into the studies and appraisals of tidal power options.
We are pressing Government to release the vital studies into the same issues on the Severn. Their findings are of great significance yet it hasn’t stopped calls to press on regardless and give support to the Cardiff – Weston barrage. We believe this is foolhardy on several fronts. Any decision should be based on the best evidence available – attempting to short cut the process risks not only subverting the expensive and detailed studies underway but also ignoring the lessons of real examples, such as the Eastern Scheldt, that can tell us so much. But perhaps the biggest risk of backing the wrong horse is that such an approach would undermine innovation to find sustainable tidal energy options that avoid cataclysmic damage to these fragile places. Innovation that could genuinely put the UK at the centre of tidal energy research and development.