Advances in Water Treatment and Enviromental Management

220 WATER TREATMENTOf course there are occasions when the greenest engineering is really no engineeringat all. This was the case in the proposals for dam building on the River Loire atSerre de la Fare, where the proposed reservoir would have destroyed a uniquevalley and no ‘green design’ could have ameliorated the environmental disaster.However, I do believe that there are other areas on the Loire where the environmentwould be compatible with a carefully designed reservoir which is also sorely neededto reduce the real dangers of flooding.The might of engineering machinery and the scale of engineering schemes is soconsiderable, that, if thoughtfully used, it can be one of the greatest powers forgood in the protection and enhancement of the environment.Engineers will be familiar with the arguments over the straightening and cementingof rivers to reduce flooding and the drainage of wetlands for agricultural production.In 1983, internal drainage boards were likening conservationists to ‘Argentinians’while the boards were described equally unflatteringly as ‘infamous’. Controversiesover wetland drainage have sent ministers of state scurrying to some of our remotestand most inhospitable marshes. It is only just over five years since Mrs Thatcherherself became involved in the controversy over the Halvergate Marshes, whilethe drainage lobby were burning effigies of the conservationists on the SomersetLevels.So what happened to the wicked drainage engineer? Has he really become an extinctspecies, as predicted by one Somerset farmer, observing the’rise of the conservationistsin 1986: ‘And what’s it done to the farmers and the drainage men? I’ll tell you: we’rethe endangered species now. You should see us. We’ve all got copies of the Wildlifeand Countryside Act 1981 at the bedside now, seeing if there is any mention in thereof the Greater Crested Farmer or the Lesser Spotted Drainage Engineer. You look inany of these farmhouses around here at 11 at night and they’ll all be reading acouple of chapters of the barmy thing before dropping off to sleep.’Not entirely. The water authorities still carry out large drainage programmes, whilecounty and district councils are busy on the ‘non-main river’ tributaries. If you casta shrewd eye around the countryside in March you cannot fail to notice that springis heralded not only by splashes of yellow celandines and pale primroses in thehedge banks, but also by the gleaming yellow diggers, hastily working their way upthe watercourses to use up their allocated budget before the financial year ends on1 April.Sometimes the environmental results are as bad as ever. In 1988 the mature treesalong the Fareham Brook south of Nottingham were felled and the stream gutted,in a scheme as crudely destructive as any I have ever seen. The fact that the NatureConservancy Council-apparently misreading or not understanding the drawingspresented to it by the internal drainage board—accepted the scheme, did not makethe total destruction of riverside habitat any less catastrophic for the local wildlife.RECENT LEGISLATIVE AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGEWhile the whole administrative structure of land drainage is being overhauled aspart of privatisation, the opportunity has been missed to reform the notoriouslyanachronistic internal drainage boards, where voting strength at elections isproportional to the amount of property which an individual owns. At the other endof the drainage spectrum, Welsh farmers in Powys are doing their own thing on theRiver Severn, dredging up salmon spawning beds in a vain attempt to train theriver not to erode their land. Yet such is the law, that it is hard for the water