Dredging will ease flooding in Somerset Levels, admits Environment Agency boss We've got a 20-year backlog of inactivity down there and it is actually very, very urgent that those rivers are dredged. We've got to invest in these areas. At the moment, the way in which the models work to prioritise the money for investment, it doesn't go to these areas and it hasn't done for the last 20 years. So we have really got to think very carefully about how we are going to play catch-up. Properly-maintained flood plains would "drain away within a matter of days and then be ready for the next flood," she said, warning that the extreme deluges were in line with climate-change projections. An area the size of 40 miles square (65km) of land in the Somerset Levels has been flooded since the storms began at Christmas, causing damage to homes, decimating farmland and leaving some communities completely cut off. Around 20,000 acres of farmland has been under water for a month and dozens of homes are still uninhabitable. Muchelney is reachable only by boat and the nearby village of Thorney has been abandoned. Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for the Environment, met angry farmers and residents in Somerset on Monday who criticised the lack of proper flood prevention measures, as he ackowledged the area needs careful management. Lord Smith told BBC Radio 4"s Today programme: "Dredging would probably make a small difference, but it's not the comprehensive answer that some people claim. The Somerset Levels are a completely unique landscape and that requires unique answers. He said there are 62 pumps clearing the Somerset Levels of water at the moment but that saving lives and homes would always take priority over farmland. Lord Smith welcomed a request by the Secretary of State for the Environment Agency, local authorities and the drainage authorities to get together to produce a plan in the next six weeks for long term protection of the land. He also defended the agency which he said had had "brick bats thrown" at them in recent weeks over flooding, despite staff working day and night throughout Christmas to try and help people affected by the floods. Agency teams continue to operate pumps 24 hours a day to drain an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of water (equivalent to 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools) off an area of the Levels spanning 25 square miles, Ian Liddell-Grainger, the Tory MP for Bridgwater, has criticised the agency for not doing the "big jobs" of dredging rivers so that farmers and residents can maintain them. He said: "This is not a freak act of nature, it is unforgivable negligence."