Glastonbury Festival founder, Michael Eavis, launches fund to save Somerset Levels

The Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis launched a fighting fund today to save the Somerset Levels from flooding.

Mr Eavis described the current maintenance of the area as “an absolute shambles”, with large swathes of previously productive farmland reduced to a swamp.

He has now teamed up with The Royal Bath and West of England Society to launch a fund to raise up to £4m to dredge some of the rivers on the Levels.

The Levels cover 170,000 acres of land –15 per cent of the county of Somerset – and are managed by more than 1,000 farmers.

“They used to have half a dozen drag lines that would be going throughout the winter,” said Mr Eavis, who farms at Pilton, near Glastonbury. “It should be so simple to introduce a system that works, but it’s all been an absolute shambles.”