{"id":650202,"date":"2026-10-10T03:10:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/650202\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T03:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:10:16","slug":"proper-river-management-not-dredging-will-help-prevent-flooding-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/650202\/","title":{"rendered":"Proper river management, not dredging, will help prevent flooding \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 David Doran suggests dredging the river Slaney in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/enniscorthy\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/enniscorthy\/\">Enniscorthy<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/wexford\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/wexford\/\">Co Wexford<\/a>, to prevent flooding (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/opinion\/letters\/2026\/10\/07\/enniscorthy-river-blockages-contributing-to-flooding\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/opinion\/letters\/2026\/10\/07\/enniscorthy-river-blockages-contributing-to-flooding\/\">Enniscorthy river blockages contributing to flooding<\/a>\u201d, Letters, October 7th). <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Experience in Britain and Ireland has shown that this seemingly simple solution may not be the best way to proceed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Upstream management with restoration of woodland, re-meandering and removal of flood banks to allow reconnection to flood plains has worked in the Tweed Catchment Management Plan on the Scottish-English border. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Similar work has been done in Dartmoor\/Holnicote, southwest England, with compensation paid to farmers for interventions. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/trinity-college-dublin-tcd\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/trinity-college-dublin-tcd\/\">Trinity College Dublin<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.catchments.ie\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.catchments.ie\/\">has published<\/a> nature-based solutions, modelling and field intervention studies showing successful intervention is possible in Ireland. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Simple dredging would send the flood water downstream to Wexford more rapidly and do nothing to address the real causes: a man-made combination of overgrazed hills and canal-like riverbanks. \u2013 Yours, etc, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">DAVID O\u2019KEEFFE,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Bearna, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Co Galway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 David Doran suggests dredging the river Slaney in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, to prevent flooding (\u201cEnniscorthy river&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[132007,246,61,60,82,15342,9270],"class_list":["post-650202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-enniscorthy","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-trinity-college-dublin-tcd","tag-wexford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}