JUST a quick note to send my regards and express my distress at the plight York people as they endure these unexpected and massive floods.

I learnt about this from friends who live up there and from international news reports on television.

I was a York University MA student during 1998-99 and I came to love the city and its people.

I came back to York early this year to visit friends and attend degree day ceremonies.

I knew York was prone to this type of natural disasters but I never thought it could be so bad.

However, I am sure Yorkshire people will cope with it with solidarity and hard work.

There is nothing I can do apart from send my best wishes and this message of moral support.

Fernando Lizarraga,

Neuqun-Patagonia,

Argentina

...Sure hope y'all get that water chased back where it belongs and that you folks have not suffered too much damage and

loss.

We've been having a lot of rain the last few days but not as much as you have had but it was enough to wash the dead animals off our highways.

Mary-Ann Bartlett,

Bell County,

Texas.

...THE York floods may well be the result of changed weather patterns because of global warming.

They most certainly are worse because of the quick run-off of water from the catchment hills north west of the city.

The agricultural system of hill farming for beef and sheep - of which people are eating less - has, over hundreds of years, drained the hills and removed the tree cover.

The result is that water rushes off into streams and rivers and causes flooding.

There is a desperate need for tree planting in the hills.

This will take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and help slow, and possibly halt, global warming.

It will slow the run-off of water and allow it to seep away over a longer period of time and reduce the effects of flooding at peak times.

It could replace animal-rearing agriculture as the countryside's main industry in these areas and boost the rural economy. It will lend credibility to our western world requests to tropical countries to stop cutting down their trees.

Why should they when we have already cut ours down and are not prepared to replant?

Tree planting in the uplands of Britain, where there is related flooding, is an all-win option.

Have we got the sense and willingness to get on and do it, or will we build higher and higher walls to live behind until we become extinct?

Bill Shaw,

St Olave's Road,

York.

...Chris Titley's interesting article, Taking The Rise (Evening Press, November 3), highlights the causes of the present floods as spelled out by Professer Alan Ervine of Glasgow University's water engineering department, one of the leading authorities on the subject.

Unfortunately the article was let down by contact with John Lazenby, Yorkshire's representative of the Salmon and Trout Association, who says: "Modern farming and development methods (whatever they are) do tend to mean that water runs off the land quicker..." He said trees have been removed and fields are replanted immediately.

Previously they were left to lie fallow allowing rain water to collect in the plough furrows.

This all increases flooding of the rivers.

Mr Lazenby said farmland drainage schemes, supported by government grants, mean water runs off straight into the rivers.

I don't know where Mr Lazenby has been for the past 50 years, but there has not been much land left fallow since the Second World War because farmers cannot afford it.

However, there is now 'set aside' where land is not cropped for a year.

It is, however, well established that the land with a crop on it will hold more water than a bare field.

As regards field drainage, the effect on the water table is to lower it.

This allows the ground to hold more water, thus delaying the point at which the ground becomes fully saturated and surface run-off begins.

Francis Boydell.

Turnpike Road,

Tadcaster