Water, water, everywhere...

So what do we do about the floods?  Well, too late to do anything about it now - just do all we can to help with coping with it, but what about trying to prevent it happening again?  First off, can we do anything?  It's accepted that this has been an unprecedented event and more or less by definition you can't plan for something which is unprecedented.  What we can do is imagine the worst that we think could happen and then plan for that.  My wife and I went on holiday to Maspalomas three times and stayed in the same hotel.  We were fascinated by a large (I do mean large) concrete channel just outside the hotel running down to the sea.  I reckon 30 or so meters wide and about 15 to 20 deep. And there it was - just a concrete channel, doing nothing, with weeds growing from cracks in the concrete.  Other than that it was called a "barranco" we couldn't work out what its purpose was. Second time we went there, just the same.  Then the third time we were there we heard it was seriously raining up in the mountains, and the next morning when we came down - the barranco was a raging torrent, full almost to the top with fast flowing water.  So that's what it's for!  Without it, the whole area would have flooded.  So there's a thought - dredge all the rivers and keep them dredged. Construct channels to take any excess.  Divert flood water onto open ground away from buildings.  It becomes a matter of money of course - it always is.  And we have to accept that whatever we do, nature may throw another unprecedented event at us, and the arguments will start all over again,