A campaign encouraging the public to ‘Love Your River’ aims to highlight the link between river health and water use, so that people understand and value water and take action to improve their local rivers.

The campaign, a partnership between Defra, the National Trust, the Environment Agency, the Wildlife Trusts, Keep Britain Tidy and water companies, also seeks to celebrate the importance of rivers to local communities and to recognise the work being done by community groups to protect them.

Visiting the River Chess in Chesham with campaign adviser and Olympian rower James Cracknell to help schoolchildren monitor its environmental health, Natural Environment Minister Richard Benyon, explained the importance of rivers:

“We rely on rivers for much of the water we use, so it is in all our interest that we protect and cherish them.”

James Cracknell described his experience of the personal, social and economic benefits of rivers:

“Going to school in Kingston, I’ve experienced first-hand the benefits a river can bring to a community – not only for physical activity, but socially and fiscally also. We’ve all got a role to play in making sure our rivers are as healthy as they can be.”

Local action to improve the River Chess

Local community groups and water companies are working on the Chess to improve water quality, with Thames Water recycling its customers’ treated wastewater back into the river. “We are one of hundreds of river trusts around the country, and our aim is to get local people involved in understanding and caring for their local river,” said Paul Jennings, chairman of the River Chess Association.

“It is easy to overlook the simple fact that water from that river is what comes out of our taps and showers,” said Richard Aylard, Sustainability Director for Thames Water. “Every drop we use is a drop less in the river. ‘Love Your River’ seeks to remind us that using water wisely – whatever the weather – can help protect our glorious rivers.”

Engaging communities around the country

The campaign is working with communities across the country. The Riverfly Project works to improve water quality through monitoring riverfly populations in the North East of England. Community volunteers have been trained to gather data about the number and type of invertebrates living on the River Tyne, a key indicator of water quality, with anglers in particular encouraged to protect the river where they fish.

Elsewhere in the North East, a project in Burnley to ease a barrier to fish migration caused by a popular boating lake hopes to return salmon to the headwaters of the river Brun for the first time in centuries. It also aims to engage the local community through art projects, educational schemes at local colleges and Job Centres and volunteering opportunities for ecological monitoring and river clear ups.

Other projects across the UK include include restoration work on the River Itchen in Hampshire, with a £1.3m five-year project to develop a local nature reserve as an example of good practice in areas such as grazing, fishing and also by educating local residents on the needs of wildlife. The reserve’s proximity to Winchester city centre means that it performs a vital role in helping to absorb water, protecting the city during floods.

Environment Minister Richard Benyon has announced a new £28 million Fund to support local communities in cleaning up England’s rivers and encouraging local wildlife to flourish.

Part of a £92 million Defra commitment to clearing up England’s rivers and lakes, the Catchment Restoration Fund will allow communities and charities to improve local eyesores and encourage iconic wildlife to thrive by tackling pollution and removing redundant dams, weirs and other man-made structures to create habitats which work for wildlife.

The fund will help meet the recent water white paper‘s commitment to improve water quality, meeting the requirements of the Water Framework Directive. Adopted in 2000, the directive provides the means to ensure that bodies of water function as healthy ecosystems, setting parameters on their ecology, biology and chemistry. The directive recognises the need to work in local river catchments and to involve local stakeholders in the design and implementation of improvements. The value of such improvements was recognised in the UK National Ecosystem Assessment.

Improving river habitats

Mr Benyon expressed hopes for the fund to help improve river habitats:

“Rivers and lakes are a vital, and much-loved, part of the English countryside and I want to ensure we make the most of what they have to offer us.

“We’ve all seen examples of rivers choked up with rubbish and weeds and know just how horrible that is to see. But where great care is taken we have seen some fantastic successes, such as the return of otters to all counties in England.

“With only a quarter of our lakes and rivers currently providing a home to a wide range of birds, fish and mammals, there is still much more we can all do. Today’s £28 million Fund will help communities and charities interested in doing just that and I hope it will lead to us soon celebrating the same sort of success for other iconic wildlife, such as water voles, kingfishers and salmon.”

Applying to the fund

The Environment Agency will be responsible for running the fund over the next three years and will ensure that money is given to local groups who can make a real difference. The fund will run initially from 2012/13 to 2014/15 with up to £10 million each year.

Community groups and charities can apply for a share of the Catchment Restoration Fund to clean up their local rivers by tackling pollution, restoring wildlife habitats and enabling fish to migrate. The lead applicant for funding must be a charity or an organisation with charitable, benevolent or philanthropic purposes.

Closing date for bids is 29th February. Funding will be awarded by April 30th following assessment by a national panel led by the Environment Agency and representatives from Defra and Natural England. There will also be further biddings rounds later this year.

Creating a better water environment

Lord Chris Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency said:

“This is a great opportunity to create a better water environment. Cleaner water, flowing in a more natural landscape will be good for business, people and wildlife, and help society adapt to the effects of climate change.

“We encourage businesses, local authorities and community groups to join together with charitable organisations to apply for funding and come up with big ideas for their local waterway.”

Further reading

• Catchment Restoration Fund for England: further details from the Environment Agency;
• Catchment Restoration Fund applications: how to apply;
• Water Framework Directive: information from Defra;
• Water Framework Directive: information from Environment Agency.

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• Love your river
• Encouraging communities to engage with local landscapes
• Preparing communities for climate change

17–18 November 2011
St Mercure St Paul’s Hotel, Sheffield

The Urban Rivers and SUstainable Living Agendas (URSULA) project investigates the sustainable development of urban river corridors. Its final conference will disseminate research outputs within the external context of river corridor development.

Full details are now available in the conference brochure, available to download from the conference webpage.

“The conference has plenty to interest anyone involved in urban river corridor environments and development, such as local authority officers involved with planning, regeneration and development, professional working with flooding in the urban environment, and ecologists working on quality and biodiversity. And of course, it is for all those people who live, work or play in a city with a river corridor!”

About URSULA

URSULA is unique in that it tackles river corridor issues holistically by treating the river and its urban setting as a system. Throughout the project, URSULA develops innovations, tools and knowledge to help guide the regeneration of urban river corridors worldwide.

Rivers have historically been at the heart of many cities. These potentially attractive and ecologically interesting urban spaces are now prime targets for redevelopment, offering the opportunity to create mixed use, high-density and high-quality communities.

URSULA’s research aims to test the hypothesis that:

“there are significant social, economic and environmental gains to be made by integrated and innovative interventions in urban river corridors”.

The project uses the River Don in the centre of Sheffield as a case study, to demonstrate such diverse topics as:

• Quantifying the cooling effect of the river;
• Mapping and analysing patterns of biodiversity;
• Investigating perception of biodiversity and people’s wellbeing;
• Exploring the impact of alternative urban designs on costs and values;
• Understanding how people and users influence river corridor development.

A key part of the project has been an integrated assessment of alternative master plan designs of a specific site on the River to develop a knowledge-based model, which can then be applied to other scenarios to aid design choice. The project has combined issues of town planning and landscape, ecology, economics and other disciplines to produce different designs for the site. Visualisation methods have played a key part, and the team has developed a variety of methods using different media which have proved extremely successful.

The conference

The programme will include sessions on issues in river corridors, decision-making, and integrated assessment in addition to technical sessions.

Keynote speakers include:

• Professor Matt Kondolf, Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning (LAEP), University of California, Berkeley;
• Dr Jon Robinson, URS Scott Wilson;
• Simon Ogden, Head of Development, Sheffield City Council.

For further information, please see the URSULA website or email Jenny Chambers at j.a.chambers@shef.ac.uk

The role of river corridors in sustainable development

River corridors can deliver a wealth of social, economic and environmental services including landscape quality, flood control, water quality, ecosystem vibrancy, economic opportunity, recreation and wellbeing. These potentially attractive and ecologically interesting urban spaces are now prime targets for development, offering the opportunity to create high quality sustainable communities.

The Government’s recently-published vision for sustainable development recognises the three pillars of sustainable development economy, society and natural environment are interconnected; and that the needs of all three must be met in order for us to achieve sustainable growth in the long term.

The Urban River corridors and SUstainable Living Agendas (URSULA) project

The URSULA project at the University of Sheffield integrates research from multiple disciplines and institutions to demonstrate that there are significant social, economic and environmental gains to be made by integrated and innovative (re-)development in urban river corridors.

The project uses a development site on the River Don in Sheffield as a case study supporting a diverse range of research topics including, for example:

• Quantifying the cooling effect of the river;
• Quantifying the effectiveness of alternative SUstainable Drainage Systems (SUDS) for the same site;
• Mapping and analysing patterns of biodiversity across Sheffield;
• Investigating how people’s perception of biodiversity affects their feeling of well-being;
• Exploring the impact of alternative urban designs on development costs and values;
• Using 3D visualistaion to integrate research from different fields and communicate alternative design scenarios; and
• Understanding how the nature of stakeholder relationships influences river corridor development.

Alternative design scenarios

A key part of this research is the integrated assessment of alternative masterplan designs to inform a knowledge-based model which, in turn, is used to evaluate further scenarios and inform a final design.

Guided by a stakeholder workshop early in the project, key interventions were identified: integrated urban water management, using the river as a microclimate modifier, enhancing public access, and river restoration through modifying an existing weir. Three research scenarios were developed to incorporate alternative versions of these interventions.

The scenarios were visualised using a variety of different media including GIS maps, photomontages, 3D walkthrough models and ‘user controlled’ visualisation software, based on gaming technology, developed by the project.

Integrated assessment

The designs were evaluated by a range of practitioners against 15 sustainability indicators, compared to the As-Is situation. The practitioners also took part in a mind-mapping exercise to identify the relative importance of different elements of the designs in determining the scores for each sustainability criterion.

Preliminary results show the As-Is situation scored below average for most indicators, particularly the economic indicators, safety and security, flood risk, energy and climate change. The three alternative design scenarios all show a marked improvement compared to the As-Is situation, but with a high degree of variation between the criteria improved within different scenarios. The difficult task is to incorporate the high scoring elements of social, economic and environmental sustainability of the various scenarios into an improved design which balances the requirements of the three ‘pillars’.

To aid this, the scores and knowledge obtained from the integrated assessment have been used to develop a Bayesian Belief Network model, which is being used to evaluate potential design amendments and inform the ‘final design’.

The ‘final design’ will be assessed by practitioners against the 15 sustainability criteria, to determine whether the process has indeed led to a better outcome for all three pillars of sustainability, or whether, for the individual development site, some aspects of sustainability must be sacrificed in favour of others.

Achieving sustainable design (preliminary results)

The preliminary results demonstrate that alternative designs for the same area can achieve very different results with regards to addressing the three ‘pillars’ of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Integrated consideration of the three ‘pillars’ within the early design stages of a (re-)development project can increase overall sustainability.

For example, by orienting buildings to make use of natural cooling, and integrating features such as stepped building heights and integrated water management into site design, it is possible to make significant enhancements to energy efficiency, resilience to climate change, and water resources while improving economic and social factors in a high quality built environment.

Stakeholder involvement

URSULA studies reveal a variety of different individuals and groups influencing the development of the river. In particular, evidence pointed to the strong presence of the Council and of voluntary organisations with general environmental interests in considering the strategic development of Sheffield’s river corridors.

Find out more

For more information about the URSULA project, visit www.ursula.ac.uk or contact Sue Hornby: sue.hornby@sheffield.ac.uk

The outputs will be presented at the Multiple Facets of River Corridor Development conference 17 – 18 November at the St Paul’s Mercure Hotel in Sheffield. To book your place, contact Jenny Chambers: j.a.chambers@sheffield.ac.uk

This ESPRC-funded research is being undertaken by the Universities of Sheffield, Bradford and Durham, with input from external stakeholders including Sheffield City Council, the Environment Agency and URS Scott Wilson.

A new UK-China partnership project will seek to develop more sustainable management policies for river basins in China: ‘Management Policy Framework for River Basin Sustainable Development’ was launched on 30th June under the UK-China Sustainable Development Dialogue.

Project team at the launch of UK-China River Basin Management project, Beijing

The project will draw upon UK expertise in integrated river basin management – developed through implementing the Water Framework Directive under EU legislation – to assess existing policies and their implementation in seven major Chinese river basins. The project will also develop guidelines on holistic planning and management, to balance ecological, economic and social development.

Expertise will be shared in both directions, with UK river managers learning about the various methods that China is developing to improve the efficiency with which it uses its scarce water resources, which may be applicable within the UK.

This new project demonstrates cross-governmental collaboration on both the UK and Chinese sides. On the UK side, UK water policy makers and managers from DEFRA, DFID and Environment Agency (England and Wales) will provide technical support; On the Chinese side, both National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Water Resources will co-lead, support and provide guidance to this project through its implementation. The project has been co-funded by DEFRA and DFID.