I AGREE with Stephen Peters when he says the Severn should be dredged.

My father worked on the dredgers in the late 1940s and they used to dredge 43 points between Gloucester and Stourport regularly. Nowadays, there seems to be one dredger to work that distance. What chance do we stand of any depth being dredged in the Severn?

We have a family-run boatyard near Worcester and our boat owners are forever hitting sandbanks and underwater obstructions in the Severn. As a commercial rated river the Severn should be able to take larger boats than cruisers without them bottoming on mud.

It has been stated that £100,000 a year is spent dredging the Severn - is this just a wages bill, or actual running time for the dredger?

If all brooks, streams, wet ditches and smaller rivers, as well as the main rivers were dredged, we may stand a chance to escape a lot of future flooding.

What might also help with storm water is for the council to clean drains more than they do and for the planners to make builders put larger drains to take the amount of water.

I am not an engineer, but I think a lot more commonsense is needed by the Environment Agency. They should consult the older generation who have practical experience, rather than paper qualifications.

We need to dredge rivers and be allowed to put the silt on the river banks.

MRS G POSTANS, Worcester.