The Environment Agency are still planning to include the destructive channel through Hinksey Meadow as part of the Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme.  This would run for several miles (Seacourt to Kennington Bridge) through the West Oxford green corridor.

We are now in the six-week-long  Public Inquiry to decide whether or not the Environment Agency's c. 1000 Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) in the green corridor are in the public interest.

Please contribute to our crowdfunder making the legal case for a better alternative that would protect Hinksey Meadow.

Our case is that the CPOs and the environmental destruction caused by the EA's preferred version of the scheme are not in that interest, and that the EA have not properly modelled and tested alternative versions of the scheme that wouldn't require the destructive channel. These alternatives would provide flood protection and save the environment.

Expert testimony has made it clear that the mitigation strategy (especially translocating MG4a grassland from Hinksey Meadow) will fail. The channel design is also likely to destroy all the remaining MG4 grassland in the meadow, due to changes in hydrology.

The promise to compensate the loss of up to 4,000 mature trees and miles of hedgerows  (also at risk from the channel) with on and offsite plantations of whips (tiny saplings) is not a good exchange for the irreplaceable bio-diversity of a mature landscape including the thousand year old Hinksey Meadow.  But the EA continues to refuse cheaper alternatives offering equivalent protection, such as a no-channel scheme or a pumped pipeline scheme.   

We are fighting hard but the Environment Agency can afford much more legal help than we can.  We have already raised £66,000 pounds, but need more to raise more funds to continue.   Please, if you can, contribute to the fight on our crowdfunder page. 

Thank you!

The Oxford Flood and Environment Group