Yes we have always lived and built on flood plains.
Much of East Anglia would be under water without constant pumping. As folk on here will know, west and south of the Wash there is a massive system of ditches and dykes, feeding forty foot drains and the hundred foot drain from Earith to Denver whence the enlarged and embanked Gt Ouse conveys water into the Wash.
The system depends more on managing water in flood than in physically preventing encroachment. There are designated areas of storage, productive land that is deliberately flooded first to reduce damage. Further east the water from dykes is pumped up into the broads from which in flows via rivers to the sea. Flooding is tolerated and managed to mitigate its destructive effect in all but the most severe events.
Elsewhere and more recently there has been more effort to build hard structures to keep water out but this become exponentially more expensive as flood levels rise, so the EA and local lead flood management bodies like county councils have been looking towards natural flood management (NFM). This is more about managing flows and increasing storage so that water flows downhill to critical points more slowly in times of high rainfall. Round here there is a baying mob ready to lynch the LA for not clearing ditches but the fact is that if all the ditches were cleared indiscriminately then in many cases the water would just travel more quickly and in greater volume to the houses that flood. There has to be somewhere for the water to get away at a rate close the the rate it arrives at.
A few years ago half my garden was covered by the flood risk area map. For some reason, and I am a bit supsicious, it now isn't and although my garden still floods neither it nor the house are in flood zones 2 or 3 which are relevant for planning! From an insurance and saleability point of view of course this is a good thing. As I am about to demolish and rebuild I will still put the new house about 10cm higher than the old one as a bit of extra insurance.
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Building On Floodplains new
Building On Floodplains new