How can we hold back the floods?

It has been the national crisis that has failed to go away.

From the depths of Somerset and the leafy Home Counties to areas much closer to home in the West Midlands, floods and rising water levels have brought destruction and risk.

Houses have been wrecked and livelihoods left devastated as idyllic villages, particularly in the south west, come to resemble a Third World disaster zone – but thankfully without the surging death toll to match.

The political fallout and subsequent blame game has come and gone.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Prince Charles and, albeit eventually, Environment Agency boss Lord Smith have been among the throng of flood tourists to visit and assess the vast inland oceans across the country.

It is, of course, too little too late. But what lessons can we learn and how do we move on?

The Prime Minister described the scenes as 'biblical', making the inference that there was nothing that could have been done to stop it happening or being repeated.

But there is nothing remotely divine about the deluge of destruction that is entirely the result of ineptitude at every level of Government.

How do I know this?

Well for just shy of three years I was a cub reporter on a rural weekly newspaper covering the swathe of Somerset now under water.

Barely six months into the job I first learnt of the neglect to the rivers and watercourses, not just in the county but across the nation.

I was sat in the front bar of the impressive Langport Arms Hotel in the ancient market town of Langport which sits at the heart of the Somerset Levels on the river Parrett.

Having made the journey across the road from the town hall following that night's council meeting, chairman Chris Osborne knocked back a double Scotch topped with water.

"They won't listen until it is too well bloody late," the gruff 70-something barked.

As a young man he came to Langport as an engineer and was tasked with building the town's sewers.

He made the town his home and has lived and worked there ever since – even saving the town from disastrous flooding in the 1960s when he helped get an old pump working to alleviate rising water levels when it seemed inevitable the town was doomed. Proof that his sort of flooding is not as rare as mandarins and politicians claim.

Living on the Levels the locals are well versed in flooding and what is needed to prevent it.

And that is how Chris spoke with such knowledge; he seemed to know every blade of grass, ditch, bog and pumping station.

"They don't dredge," he said. "The rivers here are a mess. They haven't done anything for years, They don't listen."

That was more than three years ago and he was referring to the inpenetrable bureaucratic Environment Agency which emerged from the demise of the rivers boards.

There has been a prolonged battle between locals and the agency going back years.

Farmers, councillors and residents have been calling for dredging to take place in the rivers for nearly a decade. Gone are the days when a group of burly men rolled up their sleeves and cleared the silt and muck from the rivers, Chris told me.

Instead we live in an era where university graduates sit behind desks staring inanely at their 'wretched' computer screens, he said.

But it extends further than that. We need to stop building homes on floodplains, invest in infrastructure and, importantly, take responsibility to protect our citizens.

Closer to home we saw flooding and high water levels in Bewdley, Bridgnorth and Stourport.

The taxpayer now faces a hefty bill costing hundreds of millions of pounds when the right works could have prevented any of this from happening for a fraction of the amount.

So how can the chaotic scenes that are a living hell for hundreds come to fruition when it has seemingly been common knowledge that such a disaster was inevitable?

After all, the warning signs have been there.

The answer I fear lies in the words of another Somerset resident who I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with during my time in the county, writer Sir Antony Jay who penned the TV series Yes, Minister.

"People like Chris have an intelligence that exceeds their education – when the reverse tends to be true for civil servants and politicians," he quipped.

Quite.