Green Assembly Member Baroness Jenny Jones calls for hundreds of kilometres of London’s rivers to be restored as a cost effective way of protecting London.
“The Meadow” alongside River Thames at Pangbourne, photograph courtesy of Peter Linton.
Responding to calls for back-to-natural flood reduction schemes by the Chartered Institute of Water and Environment Management (CIWEM) to slow river flow and cause managed floods upstream and which cost a fraction of conventional flood walls, London Assembly Member Jenny Jones asked Boris Johnson to take a leading role in restoring the hundreds of kilometres of London’s rivers (River Thames tributaries). Only 1km will be restored in the next year.
Jenny Jones said: “The recent extreme weather events should serve as a warning of the potential damage that river flooding could cause to the hundred thousand at risk properties in London”
“Boris Johnson should be taking a leading role in ‘restoring’ the hundreds of kilometers of rivers as a cost effective way of protecting London properties and other vital infrastructure”
“River restoration means removing the concrete walls that channel rivers and with flood risk reduction landscaping they increases flood storage capacity to help prevent rivers from flooding properties downstream. The London Assembly Environment Committee report ‘For a rainy day’, looked at the Mayor’s role in managing flood risk in case of severe rainfall. It recognised that ‘every outer London borough has the potential to use green spaces, parks, playing fields and school grounds as part of an integrated [floodwater management] system.”
Examples of River restoration projects:
· River Quaggy at Sutcliffe Park in Greenwich
· Cornmill Gardens, Lewisham (before and after pictures)