{"id":24442,"date":"2023-02-08T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T13:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=24442"},"modified":"2023-02-13T10:17:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T09:17:36","slug":"its-such-a-simple-idea-why-havent-we-been-doing-it-for-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/2023\/02\/08\/its-such-a-simple-idea-why-havent-we-been-doing-it-for-years\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s such a simple idea, why haven\u2019t we been doing it for years?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a simple idea, why haven\u2019t we been doing it for years?\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n\n

How nature could help fix our flooding problems <\/p>\n\n

By <\/em>ANDREW GRIFFITHS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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IT WAS RAINING WHEN I VISITED Manchester, fittingly one might say, given its popular image. Fittingly, also, because I was standing in West Gorton Community Park, which includes a lovely rain garden \u2013 asunken area filled with water-loving plants where rain is channelled and left to soak away slowly, rather than bouncing off the roads and pavements then hitting the grids all at once, swamping the already overburdened sewerage system. <\/p>\n\n

The rain garden is one of a number of features in the park designed to manage storm water and help prevent flooding in an area that is prone to it. These other features include swales (imagine ditches planted up with vegetation), timber dams, permeable paving, alder trees, and a mini wildflower meadow where ox-eye daisies sway gently in the breeze. <\/p>\n\n

Not that you are immediately aware that these are rainwater management features. All you really see is a beautiful green space, an oasis of calm in the city. <\/p>\n\n

Manchester City Council commissioned this award-winning park as part of a 10-year plan to regenerate the area. It is also one of the UK\u2019s first research and demonstration project for assessing how Nature-Based Solutions can help combat climate change, and is being closely monitored by scientists at Manchester University. <\/p>\n\n

NONE OF ITS DESIGN CONCEPTS are difficult. You take the hard, flat surfaces of the urban environment and do your best to get rid of them. Soften them, roughen them, make them porous. Scoop out sections and fill them with water-loving plants. Then, channel the rainwater into them and let the vegetation soak it up. That water is then released slowly back into the atmosphere via transpiration in the leaves. <\/p>\n\n

Given that the natural world has been doing this for years, it makes sense that these methods are called Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). Green Infrastructure is another term; SuDS another, which stands for Sustainable Drainage Systems. Snappy, huh?<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Whatever you want to call it, NBS tick a lot of boxes. They take some stress off our antiquated sewerage system; their trees and plants store carbon, helping to mitigate climate change; and they create valuable wildlife habitat. They also provide the green lungs that are so important for our physical and mental wellbeing. NBS is such a wonderful and simple idea that you wonder why we haven\u2019t been doing it for years. And that\u2019s a very good question. <\/p>\n\n

MARK TURNER IS TEAM leader of Natural Course, a partnership from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority that aims to improve water quality. \u201cThe [green] technology has been in place for a while, so we know what can be done,\u201d he says. \u201cBut how do we pay for it? And how do we go from funding demonstration or niche projects to delivering neighbourhood-wide or catchment-wide solutions? Everybody sees it as somebody else\u2019s project.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

An insight into why green infrastructure projects have been so slow to move from the drawing board into reality can be found by travelling to the River Wyre in Lancashire, where a \u00a31.5m Natural Flood Management (NFM) pilot project is underway. <\/p>\n\n

The catalyst for the project, which will protect towns and villages along the 45km of the Wyre from flooding, was the severe storms the region experienced in 2015. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cEffectively we will be delivering 70ha of NFM interventions and 39ha of woodland creation,\u201d says Tom Myerscough, general manager of the Wyre Rivers Trust, which is co-steering the project. \u201cWork will include the installation of \u2018leaky dams\u2019 [woody material laid to slow water flow], ponds, scrapes, river restoration, hedges and offline storage [where water is diverted from the river channel and stored in a separate area].\u201d <\/p>\n\n

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Hundreds had to flee their homes when Sheffield\u2019s River Don broke its banks in 2007 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

This work will improve water quality as well as help prevent flooding. It will create superb habitat for wildlife, as well as making beautiful places for people to visit. The work itself is relatively straightforward \u2013 the innovation has been in how to finance it and how to get people to accept new ways of doing things, which took two years. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cEngineers like to do grand projects with concrete and pipes, because that is how they were trained\u201d <\/span><\/p>MARK LLOYD, CEO OF THE RIVERS TRUST<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\u201cA lot of things are run by engineers, and engineers are keen to keep doing grand projects with concrete and pipes, because that is how they were trained,\u201d says Mark Lloyd, CEO of the Rivers Trust. \u201cThere is also a lag within our institutions, in that you get innovative thinking, but there is a resistance to adopt ideas wholesale because it feels risky.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

THE PRINCIPLE OF \u2018SLOWING the flow\u2019 applies as much on a household level as it does on a landscape scale. Peter Melville-Shreeve of Exeter University\u2019s engineering department researches rainwater management systems for homes, focusing on the more mundane weather events that occur perhaps multiple times a year, overloading the sewerage system and lead to Combined Sewerage Overflows (CSOs) discharging into rivers. We have in this country a combined sewerage system, where waste from toilets ends up in the same pipes as rainwater. If there is too much volume in the system (due to heavy rain, for instance), then the excess escapes through the \u2018valve\u2019 of the CSO into our rivers, much to the detriment of wildlife, not to mention our enjoyment of what should be a beautiful natural resource. <\/p>\n\n

One solution would be to make the existing underground storage tanks bigger (so-called \u2018grey infrastructure\u2019, meaning hard engineering); another is to use more natural, above-ground solutions to \u2018slow the flow\u2019 of the storm water and prevent that sudden increase in volume. And the impact of flow can be dramatic: during a heavy storm, a 6m\u00b2 patio will generate a similar volume of rainwater to the foul outflow of 100 houses in a day. <\/p>\n\n

Melville-Shreeve has been developing an above-ground solution: water tanks attached to gutters, which slow the flow of rainwater into the drainage system during heavy rainfall and reuse that water to, for instance, flush toilets. These raintanks are \u2018leaky\u2019 (like a bucket with a hole), so they are not already full when needed to hold back water during a storm. They also have \u2018smart\u2019 controls, so that the capacity for a coming storm can automatically be created by opening a valve. It isn\u2019t easy to sell a big bucket with a small hole in it, but that is essentially what Melville-Shreeve has done .<\/em><\/p>\n\n

One senior water company executive told me of a pilot project where 55 such water tanks had been deployed to houses, leading to a 75 per cent reduction in CSO discharges into the local river. Melville-Shreeve says that his own generic computer modelling makes this figure seem entirely feasible. <\/p>\n\n

MELVILLE-SHREEVE IS currently working with Thames Water on projects that involve local communities in managing rainwater. Given that it is written into the Environment Act that water companies must reduce CSO discharges, Melville-Shreeve thinks we can expect much more emphasis on managing rainwater on the domestic scale over the coming years, with our own smart water tanks and rain gardens, for instance. The solutions are there. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cWhy doesn\u2019t a water company encourage householders to disconnect their storm water?\u201d asks Melville-Shreeve. \u201cPart of the reason is that they are already being paid to deal with the consequences. How can you charge someone for electricity then tell them to get it from their own solar panel? It is the same kind of analogy. We ask them to disconnect their roof or their driveway, yet we still want to bill them for taking their waste water. But it is the shift that has to happen \u2013 and I believe is going to happen.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

\u201cIn the past three to four years, you can really feel a move towards nature-based solutions\u201d <\/span><\/p>LEE PITCHER, YORKSHIRE WATER\u2019S HEAD OF PARTNERSHIPS<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n

It often requires a catastrophic event to change the way we do things. In Yorkshire, the 2007 floods, which saw cars floating past office windows in Sheffield city centre, resulted in the groundbreaking Grey to Green infrastructure project. <\/em>In Hull, the same storm, which closed 91 out of 98 schools and forced 8,000 people to evacuate their homes, triggered an increased investment in \u2018grey\u2019 infrastructure, but with an emphasis on \u2018green\u2019 solutions, too. <\/p>\n\n

Lee Pitcher is Yorkshire Water\u2019s head of partnerships and general manager of Living with Water \u2013 a partnership that aims to reduce surface-water flood risk using innovative NBS. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe difficulty is, for 50-plus years, engineers have gone through an education programme that has been focused on grey engineering,\u201d says Pitcher. \u201cSo the first thing is: where do you get the different thinking and cultural change among employers and in schools and colleges to encourage green solutions instead of going straight to grey?\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Living with Water encourages nature-based thinking in primary school children through to PhD students. The biggest culture shock for our current engineers is that these strategies often start with people. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like you turn up, build a big tank underground, cause disruption for three weeks and then move away \u2013 you are working and co-creating with that community,\u201d says Pitcher. \u201cBut in the past three to four years, the impetus has really changed, you can feel a move towards more NBS\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

LIZ SHARP IS LEADING A MULTI-disciplinary team at Sheffield University that is working with communities in Hull. The MAGIC project is researching how best to introduce SuDS (that\u2019s Sustainable Drainage Systems) and green infrastructure into communities, and its effectiveness. Traditionally, water companies communicate with billpayers at a household level. Sharp and her team are investigating a \u2018buildingbased\u2019 approach, where key buildings, such as schools and health centres, are targeted. Their communities of users then come away enthused with naturebased ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

MAGIC has been instrumental in setting up a local cooperative that specialises in making and fitting SuDS devices, such as planters, that have reservoirs to hold back water during a storm. They look beautiful when planted up, as well as cleverly serving as green infrastructure. <\/em>Interestingly, Sharp\u2019s research shows that reminding people of past floods events is not a good motivator. \u201cIf flooding is sufficiently close to home to be terrifying, then people\u2019s emotional reaction is just to blank off,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you put too much emphasis on the negative, there is a risk that you end up with people not engaging because the problem is too big.\u201d Instead, the emphasis is on the beauty and the wildlife these installations can attract. <\/p>\n\n

NBS ARE NOT DESIGNED to compensate for inadequate investment in our grey infrastructure, but would play a large part in any \u2018perfect\u2019 system, with associated benefits for climate change, wildlife and our wellbeing. <\/p>\n\n

As Mark Lloyd of the Rivers Trust says: \u201cWhere there is water, there is life. Slowing the flow not only deals with the problem, it creates nature. If there is water around, you can create fantastic wetland habitats \u2013 and we have lost 90-95 per cent of our wetlands in this country. Recreating them would be a massive boon for biodiversity.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Grey to Green, Sheffield city centre <\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

Sheffield sits immediately below the Dark Peak and Yorkshire Moors and is highly vulnerable to flooding. Following a series of catastrophic floods, the city has become an exemplar of how an urban space can be re-imagined with green infrastructure and innovative flood-mitigation design. <\/p>\n\n

The Grey to Green project in the city centre not only looks beautiful, with seating areas among planted up beds, but acts as a sophisticated sustainable drainage and filtration system. The plant beds are, in fact, reservoirs to hold back the flow of storm or flood water, and the plant roots filter the water before it is returned to the river. According to Grey to Green, \u201c24,000 bathtubs\u2019 worth of water is prevented from entering Sheffield\u2019s sewage treatment works each year.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

It is a lovely place to sit and eat your sandwiches when the sun is shining \u2013 a city centre as glorious as a summer meadow, beside the glinting River Don. <\/p>\n\n

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West Gorton Community Park in Manchester <\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n

Nicknamed the \u201csponge park\u201d, this \u00a31.3m project began in 2018 with the aim of providing a green space for local residents as well as reducing flooding and storm water run-off. As well as NBS such as a rain garden and swales, there is a piazza for social events and a vegetable-growing area. Researchers from the University of Manchester noted that run-off volumes reduced by 88-100 per cent (over two years) and a significant rise in people using the park.<\/p>\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n
FIND OUT MORE <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Grey to Green<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Whetted your appetite? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn more about these projects by visiting the following websites: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

West Gorton Community Park <\/strong>bit.ly\/3GNP5Um<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natural Course <\/strong>naturalcourse.co.uk<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grey to Green <\/strong>greytogreen.org.uk<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living with Water <\/strong> livingwithwater.co.uk<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

Smart water tanks<\/h4>\n\n

Computer-controlled containers to slow the flow <\/p>\n\n

ROOFS ARE AMAZING resources for many reasons, one of which is that they are superb rain-harvesting devices. In effect, they act as big funnels and direct the rainfall into your gutters, and then often straight down your drain. Each average terraced roof in Britain receives between 10,000 and 70,000 litres of rain a year. Imagine a housing estate, then flatten out all those roofs into one big area \u2013 that is a lot of water potentially contributing its volume to a combined sewerage system during a heavy storm and ending up as diluted raw sewage entering your local river via a CSO. <\/p>\n\n

\u2018Disconnecting your roof \u2019 by collecting that rain in a water tank is a good idea. To be effective though, there has to be room in the tank for a coming storm. If the tank is full, it can\u2019t prevent the storm water hitting the drainage system. One method would be to manually empty out some water when there is a storm forecast. Another more sophisticated method is to have a water tank with a computer that receives weather forecast data, so water can automatically be released when a storm is forecast.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

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The tanks connect to the roof downpipe and have solar-powered computers attached <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

More sophisticated still would be entire residential areas with water tanks receiving data. These could be \u2018micromanaged\u2019 to enable localised storm-water management and optimise the harvested water made available for other tasks, such as flushing toilets and watering the garden. <\/p>\n\n

The technology is there, the questions, as always, are largely financial: who pays who and how, and who pays to install and maintain the equipment? <\/p>\n\n

Trials are underway. South West Water has installed smart water tanks in the village of Combe Martin in Devon. Early results show that during the first six months residents stored a total of 122,000 litres of water in the 35 tanks, which would have required 245 tanks without smart controls. <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n
ABOUT THE AUTHOR <\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Andrew Griffiths is an environmental journalist and photographer who specialises in rivers. He lives in the Peak District. <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

PHOTOS: SMART TANK: SDS LTD; WEST GORTON: MARK WAUGH\/ALAMY (X2); GREY TO GREEN: ANDREW GRIFFITHS Illustration by KATE OSMOND, SMART TANK: SDS LTD; WEST GORTON: MARK WAUGH\/ALAMY (X2); GREY TO GREEN: ANDREW GRIFFITHS <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How nature could help fix our flooding problems <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":24714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"50","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"50","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_50-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_50-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"March-2023","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"March-2023","purple_external_id":"March-2023-50-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"March-2023-50-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000087241||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000087241||","purple_android_product":"com.im.wildlife.501","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.wildlife.501","purple_ios_product":"com.im.wildlife.501","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.wildlife.501","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"58d61955-0ac4-406c-83f1-ab6f21d86b70","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"2023-02-10T09:53:28Z","apple_news_article-theme":"","apple_news_api_id":"ee83259d-e050-4391-933a-fe83b9451db1","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2023-02-13T09:17:47Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A7oMlneBQQ5GTOv6DuUUdsQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":true,"apple_news_is_preview":true,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_article_theme":"","apple_news_sections":"[]"},"categories":[27],"tags":[14],"apple_news_notices":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"13","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview.jpg",1209,1600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview-227x300.jpg",227,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview-768x1016.jpg",768,1016,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview-774x1024.jpg",774,1024,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview-1161x1536.jpg",1161,1536,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/02\/Rain-Garden.-Kate-Osmond_cmyk_preview.jpg",1209,1600,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"How nature could help fix our flooding problems","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24442"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25056,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24442\/revisions\/25056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}