Advances in Water Treatment and Enviromental Management

GREEN ENGINEERING: THE CASE OF LAND DRAINAGE 221authority to prevent them from damaging the environment, unless they are alsoworsening the flooding.By 1989, however, the general situation has enormously improved. Effective statutoryprotection for the Somerset Levels and other major wetlands has come in since1984, a year which also saw a government inspired redirection of drainage awayfrom rural agricultural schemes towards coastal and urban flood defence. InFebruary 1988, EC leaders abolished the previously guaranteed price for wheat,signalling the end of the great corn boom, in a move of profound importance for thelandscape. This was followed in July 1988 with Environmental Impact Assessmentfor land drainage schemes which have brought drainage under the first tentativestages of planning.The setting up of the National Rivers Authority as part of the deal for waterprivatisation has to be good news for rivers and wetland landscapes, although thereal power of the environmentalists as opposed to the drainage lobby within theNRA has yet to be tested.CHANGING ATTITUDES AND METHODSOne major reason for what has amounted to a revolution in river management hasbeen the many initiatives made by river engineers to take on a brief for the riverlandscape. The sheer undeniable beauty of river landscapes has been their ownbest advocate in bringing about a common realisation that a new kind of bridgebuilding in river management is needed, involving engineers, diggerdrivers, farmersand conservationists, to ensure that, which the risks of flooding are reduced, thewildlife and the wild quality of the rivers are preserved and even enhanced.With this realisation came another discovery; that, subject to some criticalqualifications concerning cases in which any drainage would be environmentallyinappropriate, the whole, hitherto destructive, process of river engineering couldnow be turned on its head. By working to a brief which takes full account of the lifeenhancingpotential of a river, rather than its narrow definition as a drain, theerstwhile destroyer can now become a creator. It was recognised that machineswhich previously straightened every bend, filled every pond, and felled every treecould, at very little extra expense and at no sacrifice to drainage efficiency, actuallyextend riverain habitats for dragonflies, kingfishers, and otters, not to mentionadding to the sum of human happiness for children with jam jars, walkers onriverside footpaths, and landowners out for an evening canter or in pursuit of duckand pheasant.Mighty machines can now be seen transporting water forget-me-not to newly createdmargins at the water’s edge, the emerald-green cushions starred with their delicatebaby-blue flowers trembling over the edge of the great steel scoops before being laidgently down into a new niche of carefully prepared river ooze.TECHNIQUES FOR CREATING NEW RIVER LANDSCAPESThe impact of machinery originally designed to destroy habitat can, when properlyused, be nothing short of magical. A ‘Swamp Dozer,’ a machine so colossal that itliterally makes the ground tremble, is able in a matter of days of pull back a wholefield of builders’ rubble or rye-grass to recreate the kind of swamp it was originallydesigned to destroy. In a few hours, it can hollow out a sizeable pond.