On Tuesday 5th July, 22 Landscape Architects and invited guests from across the county visited the West of Waterlooville development to see best practice in Sustainable Urban Drainage systems (SUDs). The 247 hectare site has a custom designed infrastructure to reduce the risk of flooding to homes and promote biodiversity. Rain water is collected in channels […]
via SUDs Explored — West of Waterlooville
It is a well-known fact that many of the flood problems around the UK have been exacerbated by the continual building of large housing estates and associated road systems. These prevent the normal, slow soak away of rain water. Instead the water is channeled away via drains and gutters, moving the water down stream at an ever-increasing speed and volume. Ultimately dumping the water into river systems that never had to cope with this level of flow before.
So I am pleased that the developers were ahead of the game when planning the drainage system for the West of Waterlooville site. I would have expected nothing less.
However, in these environmentally aware times, we are always being encouraged to conserve water. So why does all of this carefully controlled “filtered” waste water get channeled out to sea ?
Surely, if the developers were so ahead of the game they would have designed the drainage system so that the water was pumped away to local reservoirs.
Similarly, I would expect the Welbourne developers would be looking hard at the drainage and waste water management.
WrAnTz 