Rural Sustainable Drainage from novadada on Vimeo.
Produced by
Antony Lyons with Rough Glory Films
Additional flood footage shot by
Brian Cooke, Jeremy Williamson
Adam Laity (used with kind permission of Esther May Campbell)
Music:
‘It Always Rains in England’ by Ergo Phizmiz
(creative commons license)
The Stroud RsuDs project is located in the catchment of the Stroud River Frome, which rises from the Cotswold escarpment in Gloucestershire. The project arose primarily out of a concerted effort by community flood action groups to reduce flood risk using natural flood management techniques.
The vision is “To create a river catchment where water management is fully integrated into land management practices. Where public bodies, private companies and local communities work together to manage water within the landscape, creating valuable habitat for wildlife and people, and limiting flood risk downstream”.
The majority of headwaters in the catchment have been impacted by incision and bank erosion, straightening and removal of woody debris, siltation and soil pollution. To help achieve the project’s vision and aims over 280 measures have been installed over 18km of stream/river. Key activities undertaken include introducing large quantities of Large Woody Debris, reducing the speed of flow in erosion gullies by filling with logs and brash and much more.
The long term vision is to link with partners working to improve fish migration from the sea to the restored headwaters and to create an enduring and sustainable system for adding new projects and maintaining river improvement works.
sustainableroguevalley.org 
Really interesting project. The tendency of so many engineers is to build culverts or paved ditches to divert water. As they point out, this is a huge amount of effort and expensve, and more importantly, it sends precious water resources rushing out of the area. By creating more natural diversions that actually slow down and retain water in the area so it can sustain life, they are creating something really useful and beautiful. I loved watching this!
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I had the same sort of response and thought that others might find it interesting as well as possibly useful. So thanks for confirming that! Bryon and I are thinking about trying a couple things with one of our creeks… I love that this just takes us back to the way nature has handled things all along.
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