Flood scheme mimics nature to protect city homes

A young woman with blue eyes and shoulder-length light brown hair smiles at the camera. She is wearing a blue waterproof jacket and standing in front of an area of wild flowers and grasses with modern housing visible behind a wooden fence in the background.

Yorkshire Water's 'Living With Water' project manager Emma Brown says more flood protection work is in the pipeline

Paul Murphy
Climate and Environment Correspondent, BBC East Yorkshire

An £8.3m scheme has been completed which has created a network of ponds to protect homes and businesses in an area of Hull prone to flooding.

The project in Derringham mimics natural drainage by using the ponds, known as aquagreens, to store water in times of heavy rainfall.

Planning for the work began in the aftermath of the devastating 2007 floods in Hull in which 10,000 properties were damaged and further flooding in 2013.

Councillor Charles Quinn, the portfolio holder for the environment at Hull City Council, said: "These [aquagreens] not only enhance biodiversity and community green spaces but they protect some very at-risk properties from flooding."

"Hull is the second most 'at risk' area to flooding in the country after London. In 2007 Derringham was one of the worst-hit areas," he said.

Emma Brown is general manager of the Living with Water project - a partnership between Yorkshire Water, Hull City Council, East Riding Council, the Environment Agency and the University of Hull.

She said £23m had been spent on flood resilience work across Hull and the East Riding in the past five years - and more work was planned.

"We've already seen some fantastic defence schemes built in the city and we've secured at least £26m for the next five years," she said.

An aerial view of a housing estate whose roads and gardens are submerged under brown flood water. Several parked cars are visible in the flooded streets.

At least 10,000 properties were damaged in the floods in Hull in 2007

Rachel Glossop, Hull City Council's flood risk manager, said aquagreens stored excess water until it could slowly drain away once the sewer network had capacity.

"It's a scheme that's benefiting people in terms of reducing flood risk, but it's also benefiting ecology and wildlife by providing some much needed green spaces within an urban environment," she said.

Low-lying Hull is seen as especially vulnerable to surface water flooding. The floods of 2007 occurred after the city suffered the equivalent of a month's worth of rainfall in just 24 hours.

A woman with blonde collar-length hair parted in the middle smiles at the camera. She is wearing a blue waterproof jacket with a Hull City Council logo above the words Flood Team in white capital letters. The blurred background shows a tree and wild grass area in front of a row of modern houses.

Rachel Glossop, flood risk manager for Hull City Council, says the flood scheme also provides much-needed green spaces

The aquagreens in Derringham are designed to capture water directed down nearby alleyways, or 'ten foots' as they are known locally, and away from homes and businesses.

Other schemes in Hull have incorporated permeable road surfaces and extra tree and bush planting to help slow the flow of water into the sewerage network.

The projects are fitted with sensors and these are being monitored by scientists from The University of Hull.

Professor Stuart McLelland said the data they received would help to design future flood defences.

"We've got a number of probes monitoring water as it flows into the aquagreens and we're using that to see how they perform," he said.

"Hull is at risk from a number of different types of flooding and we need to better understand how these risks impact society."

A newly resurfaced tarmac alleyway stretches into the distance between wooden fences and two red brick houses.

Alleyways, known locally as 'ten foots', have been redesigned to channel water away from homes

Related topics