A BOY of six has been ordered by a council to stop building pebble dams in a stream ? in case they trigger a flash flood.
It has warned ?Daniel Johnson?s ?father Rob that the little piles of pebbles could block the brook and cause a ?major ?disaster?.
But Mr Johnson, 33, said the dams his son beavers away at creating are five inches high and the water in the stream is just a couple of inches deep.
?I am gobsmacked by this, it?s just ridiculous,? he said yesterday. ?This is about a child being supervised by a parent and playing in a stream two inches deep. ?We have made pebble dams a few times. It?s the stuff you do with your kids. ?It is a normal, everyday activity, something people do all over the country. ?The parish council has told me to stop doing it ? but even the rain would wash the pebbles away. ?Daniel doesn?t make proper dams. It?s just a few pebbles in a row that the water flows around. We have lots of people stopping us and saying they used to do it with their grandchildren.?
A letter sent out by the council accused Mr Johnson of ?repeatedly rebuilding? dams in the stream, Nettleham beck, near Lincoln, despite them being cleared away by the council on several occasions. After explaining the threat of flash flooding, the letter ends by stating: ?We request you cease your activity forthwith.?
Parts of the village were under water in the heavy nationwide floods of June 2007. But the last major flood before that was in the winter of 1947-48.
Neil Bonnington, 35, who lives nearby, said: ?This does seem a bit heavy-handed. ?Surely there is a limit to the size of stones a six-year-old boy can put in the beck?
?It is the kind of thing all children do growing up in a ?rural area. It is like something out of Wind In The Willows or Swallows And ?Amazons.?
But Terry Williams, chairman of Nettleham Parish ?Council, said: ?We can?t have people doing this sort of thing willy-nilly. We are very concerned about the potential consequences of ?flooding.?
Council clerk Julie Finn added: ?The gentleman had been going into a certain section of the beck and building dams. We had them taken out but they were rebuilt. ?That is when we had two ?complaints. In 2007, the majority of the centre of the village was flooded. The beck is the main water course through the village.
?We and the district council have done an awful lot of work clearing the undergrowth and we try to remove silt to ensure it is kept free-flowing.
?We have tried to make this gentleman aware of the situation but he did not like the reason we gave for sending the letter.?
In the 2007 floods, Nettleham?s High Street and village green were so swamped they were nearly ?impassable. The Black Horse pub and the village library had water lapping at their doors.
Company director Tim Sharp, 45, who lives in Nettleham, said: ?It does seem a little bit like political ?correctness gone mad that a little boy can?t put a few pebbles in the beck. ?It is the kind of thing that all children do when they are that age and it is better than staying at home and playing computer games all day. ?I have some sympathy with the parish council as the flooding in the village was quite bad in 2007 ? but I don?t think it should be writing letters about ?something so trivial.?
