The Environment Agency (EA) has been accused of "ignorance" and "arrogance" as business owners, campaigners and farmers warn that the failures of the Somerset Levels could be repeated on a small scale in Devon.
A long-running environmental conflict erupted last year over plans to breach river banks and allow sea waters to flood fields alongside the River Exe, near Topsham, thereby creating a new inter-tidal habitat.
Opponents, who met yesterday to assess the effect of the latest high water, claim that abandoning the Lower Clyst Valley and simply letting nature take its course threatens to inundate a major route into the city ten times a year on spring tides.
Nigel Cheffers-Heard, who lives at the 16th century Bridge Inn beside a crossing over the Clyst connecting Exeter with the east of the Exe estuary, said the agency was offering farmers thousands of pounds per acre to flood land.
"We have got the same problem as the Somerset Levels here - they stopped dredging 25 years ago," he added.
"The EA have a biased view that this is about habitat creation but things have moved on with these extreme weather events and people and their needs need to be put back into the equation"
Officials says the project, part of a greater Exe Estuary plan, which proposes to "hold the line" at some points along the tidal river with "managed realignment" at others, said dredging was unlikely to restart in the foreseeable future, given the need to focus on more pressing problems such as the River Parrett.
A spokesman added: "We are exploring the options and negotiating with landowners as to what they are prepared to accept or not – we want to tap into local knowledge.
"It is a very different from the Somerset Levels."
But Michael Dart, who runs the nearby Darts Farm Shop, said the EA were not engaging with locals who have managed the land for centuries.
"Their attitude is arrogant and ignorant," he added.
"They have this blanket policy which says homes or agricultural land but some land also protects homes.
"Somerset farmers have been telling them this would happen for two years and we and we have been doing the same."
Tim Hale, of the CPRE in East Devon, said the "fundamental concern" was the loss of good agricultural land.
