Are SUDS The Answer to Floods?

It’s another rainy day in the West Midlands and visions of the floods the UK suffered in the summers of 2007 and 2008 are inevitably surfacing.

Flooding costs in the region of £1 billion a year to clean up and it’s likely to get worse too;  a recent Parliamentary report suggested annual flood damage could cost £27 billion annually by 2080.

Water management is of growing concern to many, and New Optimist, Coventry’s Susanne Charlesworth is a leading authority. She has novel ideas on how the UK’s aging sewerage infrastructure could cope with the increasing demands being made on it.

She heads a team looking at the potential of SUDS (sustainable drainage systems). This is a deceptively simple approach to dealing with waste water, one new to the UK though in use in the States for some time.

When it comes to traditional drainage, the idea is fairly simple: pipe everything from cities as soon and as fast as possible. But this way of doing things can have hazardous knock-on effects. Collecting run-off from hard paving and roofing can increase the risk of flooding, plus this surface water run-off is often seriously polluted. Also by diverting rainfall to piped systems, ground water depletion becomes more likely.

“SUDS” by contrast are made up of a series of devices and techniques which either allow water to infiltrate or be detained; either way, these devices encourage the water to remain at source and to dissipate slowly; examples include swales (often traditional flood plains), also permeable paving and green roofs to mimic the natural drainage of a site and reduce the speed of run-off.

It’s one idea of many, for all sorts of imaginative things can be done with storm water. As blog The Dirt reports, in Illinois, Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects have completed work on The Circle.

The Circle’s a sustainable roundabout that cleanses – through filtration bogs, ultra violet sanitizers, and a “structural cell system” – and recirculates storm water into a public fountain providing community green space and making a fairly decent roundabout at the same time!

Susanne’s chapter in the New Optimists examines how ideas like these can become a vital part of our urban infrastructure and, at the same time, provide lots of wildlife habitats. She concludes

In the future, I see cities as blue and green rather than grey and brown. I see them as attractive and pleasant places to live, cool and clean and in a fit state to hand on the future generations.

Her contribution to The New Optimists is important, cutting edge and fascinating to read.