These talks have now completed. Here is a summary of the issues discussed.
We face multiple challenges regarding water. Chaotic global weather now impacts us all from the national, through to the regional and down to the domestic. It’s easy to forget about floods when we have droughts and vice versa. Too much or too little and not at the right time or in the right place. There’s now no such thing as ‘waste water’; there’s shortages somewhere. This series of talks takes a deeper look at this important issue.
Water in the Landscape
The first talk was given by Dave Rumble, Chief Executive of the charityWessex Rivers Trust. He is especially interested in large-scale, integrated approaches to environmental challenges and so called nature-based solutions where ecological restoration and climate action interlink. This talk covered the watery landscape of our local catchment, where the chalk aquifer and its streams are of national and even international importance. It can take 40 years for water falling as rain here to emerge, so with the pollution falling today we are storing up problems far into the future. Variability in rainfall is becoming more extreme, which is causing problems for wildlife.
Water in the Garden
This talk was given by Kevin Bryan, who was a research ecologist and has seen first hand the impacts of changing weather patterns across the world over the past 40 years. The UK is not immune to these changes. His current interests include conservation at local and ‘small plot’ levels, including within gardens. This embraces gardening for wildlife and ‘micro’ rewilding. At landscape levels, some districts use schemes to lessen the impacts of chaotic weather, especially flooding, such as ‘Natural Flow Management’. In Yorkshire, for example, this includes the Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) and, specifically, ‘Slow the Flow’ programmes in Calderdale, which covers the Hebden Bridge area. Schemes for drought management can be much more complex. Kevin discussed how ‘nature-based’ solutions can be applied at the garden level, to manage gardens and other small plots for periods of both excessive rain and insufficient water. Techniques include rainfall storage (eg the water but) and addition of ‘sponge points’ in gardens to soak up excess rain.
Water in the Home
The third talk was given by Adrian Pickering, a retired engineer with experience in both the private sector and in academia. He is also the owner of a nationally-registered ‘SuperHome’ where he has implemented a range of solutions to reduce environmental impact. These include the use of well water for toilet flushing and rainwater for washing machine. (See also our blog on fitting a rain water flushing system, by a member who was inspired by Adrian’s example.) Simple water saving techniques like collecting shower water for the toilet or garden watering can reduce domestic water use. The more complex methods can reduce it a lot more.
Water in everything, Everywhere
The final talk was given by Angela Cotton, Co-Chair of Transition Southampton. This talk looked at ‘virtual water’ which makes up some 90% of the water we use and is embedded in everyday food and goods. Some crops require much more water than others, and some products (notably electronics) use a lot of water in their manufacture. Water drawn in one place to grow crops or manufacture goods electronics is effectively being transported to the importing country, and is a particular problem where the exporting country (such as China or India) is already water-stressed. Globally, fresh water is increasingly an over-extracted resource, leading to problems such as drought and land subsidence, impacting on livelihoods and food production.