Coast Protection Scheme Spurs Broads Warning

Five villages – plus the biggest of the Norfolk Broads – would be surrendered to the sea if a new proposal for protecting the East Anglian coast was approved, an ecologist warned yesterday.

Dr Martin George, of the Broads Society, said the plan, put forward by Government landscape adviser Natural England, was “horrifying”.

The scheme would allow the sea to breach about 15 miles of the north Norfolk coast – between Eccles-on-Sea and Winterton – and flood inland for up to about five miles as far as Potter Heigham to create a new bay.

Dr George, a Broads Society committee member and past chairman, said hundreds of homes plus Hickling Broad would be lost. He said about an eighth of the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads – about 25 square miles – would be lost under the proposal.

The plan was put forward at a workshop, attended by a variety of environmental experts, including Dr George, in Norwich in February.

Experts doubt that coastal defences in the area will stand up to rising sea levels caused by global warming and must work out how best to spend money defending coastlines.

A spokeswoman for the Environment Agency, the body which advises the Government on coastline management, said the Natural England proposal was a suggestion for debate, not a plan about to be implemented.

(c) 2008 Yorkshire Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.