Farmers in a West Sussex village have lodged a desperate plea for immediate action amid the ongoing devastating caused by flooding.
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00:00 My name's Emma McLaren, I work for Nick my uncle here on the farm down at Flanshan.
00:06 We're arable, we used to be dairy farmers and these fields we're standing in now, which are currently under water,
00:13 should be growing a crop of maize this year. But as you can see, it's potentially unlikely that we're able to do that.
00:20 If you can't get the seed in, because you can't work the ground or the seed floats away, you've got no crop.
00:27 And then if you get a crop and it's a wet autumn, you get this again.
00:31 You end up having a crop here that you've managed to grow across the summer and the drier months,
00:36 but you're then unable to get the crop off or harvest the crop.
00:40 So acres and acres of valuable crops will really go to the wall and be wasted.
00:47 So that's money that we have spent growing the crop and then money that we are foregoing by being unable to harvest the crops.
00:56 We could lose up to £600 an acre. We've got 20 acres here which is affected by it.
01:05 My neighbour's got 90 acres. It's absolutely desperate.
01:10 It is, and it's right along this drive up to Barnum. All the farmers along it are facing the same battles that we are.
01:20 So we have been trying to get something addressed over the past six years via representations to our MP,
01:29 the Environment Agency, West Edmonton County Council, but things just aren't happening.
01:35 Now as you can see, obviously over the past year, the situation has got worse.
01:39 It's not only us as farmers and landowners that are being flooded, but it's now down into Bodna.
01:44 They spent weeks and weeks and weeks pumping out the electricity substations which meant that Bodna would have been plunged into darkness.
01:51 Tesco's car park.
01:52 Yeah, Tesco's has been shut for weeks and weeks, Bodna Golf Club.
01:56 The economic impact of this flooding now is stretching farther and wider than it ever has done before and it's started to cost a lot more money.
02:04 So this is why we want to address it now because Bodna is only going to get worse unless something is done about the rife.
02:12 And the quite simple fact is that since the Environment Agency has been responsible for the rife,
02:18 which runs right the way down to the seawall at Bodna, nothing has been done.
02:23 It is silted up, it cannot carry enough water off these fields, out of Bodna and down towards the sea, the levels that it should be actually carrying.
02:32 And it's very simply addressed. Something needs to be done and as farmers we are able to help do that.
02:38 It needs to be dredged, the banks need to be brought back and the level of the rife needs to be lowered so it can carry more water.
02:46 And it would go a long way to addressing the flooding problems we have here and now down into Bodna.
02:53 So as a group of farmers and landowners, along with local businesses, the caravan park in Bodna, Tesco's, Marks & Spencer's are now very interested,
03:03 they are looking to set up an independent drainage board which would take on board the maintenance and the upkeep of this rife
03:11 to try and ensure that the upkeep of it means it can carry water away from us, away from Bodna and out to the sea.
03:19 So we're currently in negotiations with the Environment Agency, West Sussex County Council,
03:24 we have the backing of local businesses, we have the backing of the NFU, we have the backing of all the local landowners
03:30 to try and get something as a group, a collaborative, positive approach that we can actually do something,
03:37 do the actual work on the rife, take it away from the Environment Agency so that we can go some way to addressing these flooding issues that we actually have.