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| Reedbed in Terryland Forest Park, Dyke Road, Galway city |
The large scale flooding being experienced
by Ireland and destroying many people’s homes and livelihoods is partly a
result of man-made global climate change where the warming of the atmosphere is
leading to ever more stormy weather and heavy rainfall across north western
Europe. But in the case of this
country it is also due to the serious loss of natural habitats such as bogs,
wetlands and floodplain meadows that use to soak up and retain water. Furthermore
there is the added problem in our rural areas of compacted soil caused by
intensive grazing and other modern farming practices as well as increased
urbanisation characterised by concrete and tarmac surfaces which do not absorb
rainwater. Rivers are becoming ever more disconnected from their natural floodplains
by land reclamation for built development and the construction of defences that
include forcing water into narrower channels that will inevitably overflow or
burst their banks in this epoch of increased rainfall.
Building in Floodplains: A Madness Driven
by Greed
Our politicians and the National Emergency
Co-ordination group have to realise that building more flood-walls, culverts
and canals are expensive solutions that in many cases are doomed to failure. Sustainable
flood relief can only come about by making more space for water and not less
which is sadly what we have been doing for far too long. Building in
flood-plains against expert advice merely to satisfy the demands of landowners
and property speculators was one of the most calamitous political errors of the
last few decades and which is now coming back to haunt us. Recently former
Minister of the Environment and Local Government Noel Dempsey stated that counties
such as Galway, Roscommon and Cork that are suffering greatly at present were some
of the very counties that the government had to issue directions to change
their draft development plans because the guidelines on flood-risk management
were being ignored. Don Moore of the Irish Academy of Engineering stated
bluntly on RTE Radio News “that the message of the future is clear –don’t ever
build on a flood plain.” The
environmental NGO An Taisce were warning for decades of the consequences of
building in such areas and in the process were harangued by politicians of the
main political parties for being ‘anti-development’. In the case of Galway, the
organisation has recently reminded the public of their disagreements with the
blocking of turloughs in the southern part of the county and the deforestation
in the Slieve Aughty mountains as well as their call for a single authority for
the River Shannon. Insurance cover for huge numbers of families like my own who
bought properties in what we were not told at the time were located in flood-plains
is a ‘councillors-caused’ disaster that has to be addressed and accounted for.
Work with Nature, not against it
There is now an urgent need now to radically
transform our approach by developing a new strategy to work with Nature and not
against it. As well as restoring riverine reedbeds, marshes, callows, bogs and
coastal wetlands, the state needs to partner local communities and landowners
in implementing a nationwide policy of native tree planting to create forests
and woodlands including in urban areas as we are doing in Galway city through
the Terryland Forest Park where nearly 100,000 trees have been planted by a
partnership of the city council, environmentalists, schools and residents
groups since 2000. Recognised scientific
research shows that one large tree can lift up to 450 litres of water out of
the ground and discharge daily it into the air. It is estimated too that for every five percent
of tree cover added to an area, storm-water runoff is reduced by approximately
two percent.
Green Engineering
We need to look at best methods of engineering water absorption into our
urban built environment by for instance placing rooftop gardens on buildings,
replacing concrete plazas by wooded parks and piping rainwater into toilet
cisterns.
It would be a major policy shift for the Irish state to move towards
expanding rather than destroying natural habitats. But we have to realize that
we are part of nature and not above it. It was the latter philosophy that
brought about catastrophic global climate change and the COP21 Paris international conference signed by all governments of
the world recognised this. So now is the time for the Irish state to honour its
international commitments and use the geographical processes of the Earth to
develop long-term sustainable natural defenses against flooding.
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