River Restoration in the UK:
limitations, drivers andaspirations
Jenny Mant
therrc.co.uk
And
RESTORE restorerivers.eu
Restored Ford, River Ogwen, North
Wales

Moderator
We have Dr. Jenny Mant from the River Restoration Centre in the United
Kingdom and today, she will talk about the river restoration in the UK. And
you can ask questions in English or in Japanese.

Please come on stage.

Please.
Dr. Jenny Mant
So, thank you very much for inviting me and, secondly, I was invited to this[Technical Difficulty] by you to talk [Technical Difficulty] history of [Technical
Difficulty] restoration and then some examples of the river restoration
projects in the UK.

Do you need to translate for me or I’ll just carry on?

[Japanese]Moderator
Yes, okay, you can carry on.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Okay.

So, it’s fine.

Moderator
Yes, it is.

The UK’s Rivers•

Modified over many centuries.
•
Particularly rapid over the last 60
years.

Due to:– land clearance/deforestation– medieval milling– water meadows– navigation– land drainage– flood protection– abstraction– urbanisation

Okay.

Approximately 80% of English rivers
have had part of their channel
modified.

This has resulted in:• Extensive straightening– damaged wildlife habitats– reduced value of fisheries– reduced aesthetic appeal•

Loss of floodplain wetlands – reduced ability of the floodplain
to provide economically viable
functions.

So the rivers in the UK, some of these may be the same in Japan,

some might be different, but there has been multiplications to a lot of ourrivers and that’s in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; there are four
countries, over many, many centuries starting with the industrial revolution in
the 1800s.

But over the last 60 years or so, there’s been a massive, massivechange, particularly as there has been more infrastructure and a lot more
housing occurring.

So, as that’s happened, the rivers have changed andbecome much more constrained.
There have been a lot of reasons over time why it’s happened and the first portof call, it has more to do with clearing the land for agriculture and taking away
the forests. Another big thing that happened was milling – a lot of milling, forindustrial use and for making flour as well and that happened a long, long timeago, probably about 600 or 700 years ago and you’ll see a lot of remains ofmills on many, many of our rivers and there will be weirs wherever there is amill and a millwheel as well, so a lot of rivers like that have been affected.
Another thing is a completely different thing to that actually is in terms ofwater meadows where people used to manage the water and decided when
they wanted the water onto the flood plains for agricultural use.
are very old reasons for the changes and modifications.

So, thosePerhaps the more recent things are things like navigation, so moving goods
from one place to another and using the boats for that and, more recently, forrecreation.

Draining the land, almost the opposite to the water meadows andtaking as much water off of the land to keep it as dry as possible and then for– meaning that there was potentially more water in the rivers at shorter
periods of times which has affected the rivers.
One of the most important things there more recently is there’s been more
infrastructure has been looking at flood protection, so how do we stop thosehouses and those industries from being flooded.
On the opposite of flood protection, the other thing that’s affected rivers isabstraction, so because we’re a smaller island with quite a lot of big population,
there’s been not a very real need for use of water for domestic use and also for
agricultural use.

So if we have a drought, if we have a dry period, often thewaters at the rivers become almost dry quite often and that’s a problem interms of the ecology.

And that’s what will come about because of increased

urbanization or a lot of it has as well.

So, that has a main impact on the rivers.

Instead of natural rivers, they’ve been put into culverts or into concrete banks
and beds.
So if you look at the figure here, about – I heard somebody else saying thisearlier – about 80% of English rivers, in particular, Hood English, because
probably in Scotland, there are more natural rivers but, certainly, in England,
80% of rivers have had a part or most of their rivers modified and couldn’t beclassified as natural.
So the main things that has happened, the rivers that once meanderedthrough the countryside had become very, very straight, they’ve been
over-deepened, they may be made much deeper so they don’t leak into theflood plain anymore.

The effect of that has been that the wildlife habitats

have been destroyed and, in particular, because it’s a very important interestin the UK is the value of the fishery has decreased.
importance on salmon, in particular.

We have a great

So salmon eggs but also trout because

people like to fish them and they pay lots of money to go fishing for those but

also they’re very important from the commercial side of things as well.
I think a majority of people would agree that a river in a concrete bank andbed is not really very attractive to walk alongside, so it looks at that side ofmany of our rivers as well.
That’s the actual river itself.

If you look at the surrounding flood plain, they

have been disconnected from the rivers, so that natural use of the flood plain
in terms of flood risk and increasing the amount of habitat for various species
has also decreased.

And it’s a very important side to that because thoseflood plains can actually provide an important element for the economy as wellin terms of the amount of habitats it provides particularly for those fish andthose invertebrates that the fish needs, so it’s balancing all of those elements
and the flood plains are very important for our economy.

UK river management changes
Past - Flood ‘Protection’ and Drainage
Deep channels, walls, culverts, embankments.
Present – Risk Management (floods, e.t.c.)/catchments
Storage, capacity, and more natural rivers.
Land (soil) management, sustainable drainage systems,
functioning floodplains, ecosystem services
FutureIntegrated planning policies -> river restoration

Dig it deep!

Give it space

Put it backSo, in summary, really, in the past, if you look at the management of river
channels in the rivers in the UK, in the past, there’s been a lot of flood
protection and drainage, over the last 60 years. So if you look at this first
picture on the side here, we have many, many rivers that look like this – more
like drains really.

They’re deep, they have walls, sometimes they have a top

on them and you can’t see them at all and they have these steep
embankments as well.

So not natural at all and we have lots like that andthat’s what’s happened in the past.
There’s now a bit of a change to try and look at risk river flood management –risk management of those rivers in a different way and look for opportunities
to include restoration as part of flood risk management, so allowing the riverto have more storage, more capacity by widening those areas out and helping
to have facilities for some habitat as well but I’ll talk a bit more about this rivera bit later on, so to try and create more natural river systems to actually help
with flood risk as well.
And then also along that side, looking at the soil management in thecatchments, understanding where the water gets into the river and trying tohave things that we call SUDS or sustainable drainage systems that manages
the amount of water that goes into the river as well and trying to think aboutfunctioning flood plains.
But what is the thing here – up here showed are ecosystem services. Do you
have that terminology here, ecosystem services?
Male Participant
In Japanese?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yes.
Male Participant
Yes.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yes, okay.

So it’s very, very, very important in the UK, I know.

In America,

they call it something different and I can’t remember exactly what it’s called
but it’s what drives a lot of river restoration now. It is beginning to drive it.
It’s the concept of putting a value on the ecology.
So, the thing that’s perhaps missing a little bit now in terms of driving all thisforward is planning policies.

How do you plan around rivers and linking thatto best practice river restoration and that’s part of what the River Restoration
Centre is all about, is trying to help make those linkages.

Last week! Floods, floods and more floods

And then when you listen to the news in the UK, floods week but we had mostof the country – a lot of the country was under water, lots of floods. This isactually quite a small flood but you can see these guys were going – this is a
– on this particular occasion – though I do like cycling but not through floods.
So there’s a road there and, obviously, they’re not going anywhere but that’s
the sort of one side of it but there were a lot of houses that were completely
flooded and people didn’t leave.

Some people lost their lives as well.

So, it’sa big problem when this kind of thing happens and it happened a lot in the
country and it’s a problem and it has a problem with economics as wellbecause people can’t move from one place to another.

What should our rivers be?
•
•
•
•
•
•

Part of our natural landscape
Our water resource
Bio-diverse environmental ‘corridors’
Linkages between scarce habitats
Urban greenspace and amenity resource
Transport routes

BUT: we often have….
Sewers!, rubbish tips!,
untidy!, unsafe!, no habitat
Through poor management
So given the way that we live our lives, what really are we trying to aspire forour rivers to be in perhaps most – many parts of the world, they really need to
be a part of our landscape and we have to think about rivers as an importantpart of where we live.

What tends to happen? They tend to be hidden away

and forgotten about and I think, obviously, if you know the river in Tokyo then
you will know that there’s a big road over the top of it, so the same applies.
It’s hidden away.

People probably don’t really think about water as animportant river.
We have to also think about it as an important resource for water.

We can’t

forget that we have to have water to live, so we have to think about this as
well.
But from a restoration point of view, they have to have lots of different habitat
to support the species that live in there and particularly with the discussion
about climate change, it’s important to have as many opportunities or as
many species to survive variations in that climate variability and that’s
important and making sure that those habitats link one type of habitat toanother to create these river corridors.
But there are also – particularly in urban areas, they can provide really nice

green spaces and amenity resources for local communities to enjoy.

Imentioned navigation earlier and, obviously, we can’t forget that in somecases, they do still provide a good transport route and we have to think about
that.

So, it’s integrating all of those things that we are talking about in theillustration.

But what we actually have far too often is this and it just turns

into tip where people chuck all their rubbish in the river and it’s not what wewant.

Rivers

Good quality versus poor practice

Poor Practice
So really, we’d like to have this – there should be good management of therivers but often this is what we have instead and it really doesn’t support verymuch wildlife, it’s too wide, there’s only a small amount of water in there andyou can’t see it, you can’t get to it, so that’s what we have to deal with and try
and improve.

Policies and Directives –Can they help?
• European Directives– Habitats and Species Directive (1992)– Water Framework Directive (2000)– Floods Directive (2007)• UK Legislation– Making Space for Water– Catchment Flood Management Plans– Sustainable Flood Management– Land drainage consent– River Basin Management Plans

So within Europe and the UK, there are various policies and directives and thequestion is can they really help us improve our rivers? If you look at the
PRAGMO document that you will get, I think, a copy of at the end of this whichlooks at monitoring of rivers, there’s an element in there about this what’s
called the Water Framework Directive which is the second one, the Water
Framework Directive, 2000, and the Water Framework Directive drives
everything that happens in Europe on our rivers, right across Europe, not justin the UK.
It’s there to try and identify how to improve water quality and how to improve
habitats and each country in Europe has to put a plan together which is thisyear it is River Basin Management Plan and put a plan to get it to say how
they’re going to improve the river at particular points in time.

So, the next

point in time is 2012 and if each country hasn’t delivered what they said they
were going to do then the European government will fine the countries.

So,

there’s a big incentive to actually improve all of our rivers.
So, that’s the Water Framework Directive.

Alongside that, we have our

Habitats and Species Directive, which is a European directive, which identifies
species which are rare or endangered and it says you have to improve thehabitat for those particular species.

On the other side, we have a Floods Directive in Europe and sometimes those
directives don’t always join together because if you’re looking at improving
flood risk, it doesn’t always link to improving your habitat, so there’s aproblem there sometimes and that is being discussed, at the moment, as how
we can make those directives link together more clearly.
Then, in the UK, we also have our own directives and we have from thegovernment a statement that says you must try and make more space foryour river.

It’s a statement. It’s not a law.

It’s not a requirement really but

it is a statement that says you must try and do this but it’s not always taken on
board.
We also tried to have a simple Sustainable Flood Management and that’s again
linked to making space for the water, trying to work with the natural processes
to improve our flood management rather than building higher and higher
walls.
Well, we have a legislation with Land Drainage Consent which means thatpeople can’t just take water out of the river, so the opposite, we have adrought condition, no water in the river, you can’t just take water out to try
and reduce that impact as well.
And then we have, as I mentioned before, these River Basin Management
Plans and the Catchment Flood Management Plans to try and understand what
is happening in our rivers at the catchment scale.

WF Directive
 Targeted at Aquatic
Ecosystem Quality
 Prevents Further
Deterioration
 Enhance Aquatic
Ecosystem Quality
through a program of
measures Promotes Sustainable
Water Use Implement first roundby 2015
 Investigations andwalkover surveys

So, this is the Water Framework Directive in a very simple term.
directive about this thing, so this is a very shortened version.

It’s a big

But the aim isreally to identify your river as to whether it’s bad, which is down here with thisfish to the top and the aim is to try and get your river up to high ecologicalstatus that at top there to become as natural as it possibly can and each riveris identified as to where it is at the moment on this scale and you have to say
where you think the river will be in about 2012 and then you have toimplement processes to allow that to happen.

WFD aims to: Restore Degraded Habitats• Good Ecological Status(GES)
For all watercourses not
impacted severelyRiver Restoration• Good Ecological Potential(GEP)
For all watercourses
designated ‘Heavily
Modified’, or ‘Artificial’Compromise (ecology/society)

There are two parts to the Water Framework Directive.

There are rivers thatyou need to get to good ecological status.

Now, if you remember, I said that

80% of rivers in England are not natural.

This, in good ecological status,

assumes that you have all the natural processes still in place for your river,and perhaps, for example, if it’s just the water quality that is a problem or asmall problem with the river.

And so then you would expect to try andimprove it to good – the best ecological status that you can.
But most of our rivers are actually coming to this category; they’re very, very
modified, they’re artificial, they’re not natural really and so then you’re trying
to get your river to what’s sort of good ecological potential trying to make thebest that you can for your river for the ecology and for society as well.

And

that’s really where river restoration comes in, in specific, rather than here
because apart from the water quality elements, these rivers are normally seen
to be fairly natural, so it’s this that river restoration mainly focuses on.

River ‘Restoration’
Demonstration
Projects

So now, I’m going to show you some examples of some river restoration
projects that we’ve completed in the UK.
it’s nice and easy to go through really.

So, these are mainly pictures. So,

River Skerne, NorthWest England

Later on, you’ll be given some little bookmarks about the River Restoration
Centre and on there is a website for the River Restoration Centre. If you go
to the website, it tells you lots of information about river restoration and there
are a lot of case studies on there and one of the main case studies that wehave, which was one of the first restoration projects in the UK is this one,which is called the River Skerne, and it’s in the North West – no, actually that’s
wrong.
I’ve put that wrong.

I will change this.

West – it’s North East of England.

It’s the North East, not the North

I forgot my geography so – so it’s up in the

North East and, in fact, last week with the floods, this particular river was on
the news as having severe floods.
particular project has fared.

So, it would be interesting to see how thisSo, this is what it was like before the restoration.

This is the park area here and there is – you can see that it’s very straight.
The river was over-deepened, over-widened, and there was no connection to
the flood plain at all.

So, what they did was try to put back the natural river as far as they could.
They had to look at the historical information and try to restore the river tomore natural habitats and created these wetland areas connected to the river.
For example, here, for fish habitat during flood appearance so that they could
sit there when you have floods. And also, this area was lowered and thebanks were lowered so that during floods, this whole area is meant tonaturally flood and then helped to protect the main urban area downstream
and I have seen this in floods, so I know that it does actually work.
good example.

It’s a big example of a restoration scheme.

This is a

Restoring
Habitatquality in aconstrained
river.
Vegetative
margins, lowwalls andspace!

But not all of our restoration schemes are that big and sometimes you can
only do very small restoration on your project. This particular river here is avery constrained area.

You see you have a parking on either side and a small

amount of grassland on either side.

And originally, there were high walls oneither side of the river which meant that the river was very, very constrained
So, the local government took the big walls out and still maintained this,putting some stone along the side because you can’t have this river movingaround because you have two car parks on either side.
But what it does do is that it increases the capacity during a flood event so thatthe water can come up here, which it couldn’t before, and it allows you to put
in some vegetation habitat along the edge of the river here so it can support
more species.

So, that happens quite a lot actually in small places in the UKthat are doing these small scale projects but they are very important.

Community involvement in a small stream: SouthWest England near Bristol

This is another small scale project which I saw a year ago and it had just been
completed and what happened here was – if you see this block here, there
were some small weirs along the river to about that height and behind them
was lots and lots and lots of fine silt wire material and the local government
had to keep coming and taking out all of that material and the local residents
didn’t like it because it smelled horrible and there were mosquitoes sitting in
the river and people just didn’t like it.
So the local community asked if they could do something different and they
had a guy there who was very enthusiastic and he said, can we not take out
the weirs that are holding the silt and narrow the river by putting in vegetation
and bars and the local community said, we are happy to manage thisvegetation so that if we have too much or it shifts, we will manage it and go in
and make sure that it’s okay.
And so they had a go and they tried to do it and this was about 2 or 3 months
after the project had been completed and I walked in the river with somecolleagues and we picked up some stones and under the stones were lots andlots of fish and lots of invertebrates very, very quickly that weren't there
before, so it was a really good opportunity and there are people who walkalong here and enjoy it as well.

So, it wasn’t very expensive but it’s a good

opportunity in a small area to do a small bit of restoration but it only works
because the local community is prepared to manage the river.
The other thing is they left these stones in here – these slots because if there
was a problem and it didn’t work, they would be able to put the weirs back andput it back how it was before but it’s very popular.

River Restoration
andFlood Risk
Management
I mentioned Flood Risk Management.

So, these couple of examples arereally to show you what you can do that links flood risk management and riverrestoration.

Sustainable Flood Management• Jubilee River, London
A ‘2nd River Thames’ forWindsor & Maidenhead.
11km of shallow, linked, linear
gravel bed pools. Designed toreflect the habitat lost fromthe River Thames.
High land and property prices
made the project viable at£115,000,000. =£10M per Km.
Only in London!!

Now, somebody in this room I know has already been here.

This is the

Jubilee River in London and mainly a second river was made and not an actual
river and it’s a flood risk channel.

That’s, first and foremost, what it is.

Normally, if you have a flood risk channel that takes water during the flood
flows, you will have it in a concrete channel like that with no habitat orvegetation at all.

This is very unusual project. It’s a very big project. You

can see it’s 11 kilometers of river – new river but the difference here is theycreated a lot of habitats within the water course.
It wasn’t cheap. It works out about £10 million – I don’t know how many yenthat is but a lot of yen per kilometer of river.

So it wasn’t a cheap option but

because of where it is and you may have heard of Windsor Castle and Eton
School, which is a very, very expensive private school, so there are a lot of
expensive houses in this area.

The decision was made that they need to dosomething that was good to reduce the flood risk in this area and also havesome habitat diversity as well.

So, you can link those two things together.

River Long Eau, Eastern England:
working with farmers to improve
flood risk management

If you go to London, go to ask to look at the Jubilee River and you can walkalong it.

It’s a nice walk as well.

But, of course, London isn’t the only bit of the UK that floods.

It’s everywhereout as well.

And this, I’m sorry, the picture is not good but I think you can

see a lot of it.

It’s not just flood risk problems in urban areas, there’s been a

lot of flood risk issues in farming areas as well and the farmers are beginning
to realize that actually sometimes just keeping the water away from their land
doesn’t work because they don’t get the crops that they want to grow anyway
and actually, if they change the types of crops that they grow, they can allow
floods to come out onto the river a bit more frequently providing they don’t –the water can get back into the river quite quickly.
So, actually, by having steep banks and then often levees on the side which
stopped the water going back into the river after a flood is a big problem forthe moment. And if you go to the eastern part of England, near where I live,
New Cambridge, you will see lots and lots of rivers that just look like drains
like this.

So this is how this particular river was before the restoration and, in this case,
you can see the farmer was happy with this.

He understood the concept.

They dropped the bank on this side completely so it took that big bund awaywith the idea that the river can flood into this field more naturally and thenwhen the flood is finished, it will go back in very quickly and he just changed
his agriculture to accommodate it.

And that’s what happens and then that protects areas a bit further
downstream, so beforehand that wouldn’t have happened if the water would
have just carried on downstream to the next town.
difference.

So, that’s a big

Craigie Burn, Scotland• Enhance habitat• Urban aesthetics• Low flows

Up in Scotland, this is quite an interesting little project. It’s called the Craigie
Burn.

In Scotland, they don’t call their rivers, rivers.

They call them burns

so if you go to Scotland, remember they’re burns; otherwise, you’ll get a lot of,watch it mate.

This was a river that they wanted to put a Flood Risk

Management, so they over-widened and over-deepened the river.
This height is the water from the river whilst they were doing the work.

If youtake the water out of the pipe, there’s no river because there’s not enoughwater in that pipe for the river.

So most of the year, the river is dry like this,no river anymore, only when there’s high floods. So by widening the river, all
the habitat has been taken away from the river.

Metz, France – habitat in flood risk zones

And yet, a similar example of this in France actually.

Here, you can see theywidened the river but actually, they put in some habitat along the edge of theriver, so in low flow conditions, you would still have some water in there. Allof this vegetation is very soft, very flexible, so in high floods, it just flattens
and, therefore, it doesn’t reduce the capacity during a flood event.

Yet incaveat, anything you must do is if you have more woody stiff vegetation, forexample, up there is a tree beginning to grow, you must take that out becausethat can have an effect and could reduce the capacity.
approach, you need to manage it as well.

So if you adopt this

River Restorationin

Urban Parks.

So, a lot of our restoration actually happens in urban areas and urban parks.

River Brent, Wembley Stadium, London

It’s a good opportunity and a lot of it has happened actually in London and in
Edinburgh in Scotland.

And if you look on the RRC website, you will see adocument called the London Rivers Action Plan and there are some good casestudies in there of river restoration projects.
Now, this one is the River Brent and if any of you are keen on football, you may
have heard of Wembley Stadium and this is very close to Wembley Stadium.
In fact, you can hear the football going on.
from the side as well.

It’s that close and you can see it

It has a lot of history with Wembley Stadium actually.

So this is how the river looked before the restoration, classic concrete channel,
concrete bed, so it happens over and over again.

So, the aim was to try andrestore it through the park and there were two communities outside of thepark and they were very different types of communities and they never talked
to each other.

They never spoke to each other and they were quite unsure ofeach other because they were so different.

So, as part of the restoration

project, they put in a new bridge across the river as well to try and create alink between those communities.

So, this is the restoration project in construction.
history and the project is being completed.

Again, they looked at the

They looked at the history of theriver to see how much it used to meander and where it used to go. But, in
this particular case, there was a lot of discussion with the local community
before the project was completed.

People were very concerned that where

you might have erosion on the outside of the bend and it was close to thehouses.

One day, the river might erode into their house.

In fact, that’s

probably not going to happen.
But in order to ensure and to give people confidence that that won’t happen in
the future, some of the outside of the banks had to have, what we call,bioengineering, a mixture of engineering and plant growth to stabilize thosebanks and so they used material from the old concrete beds and banks along
the bottom of the bed of the river here and then at the top, it created a meshof tree trunks that grew with wire to try and stabilize the banks and you will
see what I mean.

This is in construction.

I hope that you can see it very well.

Can you see

these poles under the wire at the top there and those are actually live bits ofvegetation and then away from the most erosive bits of the river they just put
in these rolls of vegetation at the bottom and allowed the more naturalprocesses to work with some erosion.

And that is a group of students having a look and doing a precursor – a
pre-PRAGMO on the river.

So, trying to look at how the river was functioning

as part of the restoration.
If you look here, here, and other places, it’s just the beginning of those areas
where that vegetation and the poles were put in place and they’re starting togrow up.

And a little further along the line, each area you see there, and up there, andfurther into the distance, that’s where those trees were actually growing up to
try and stabilize those banks on the outside of the bank and in other places,
you can see natural erosion occurring where people weren't worried about it.
A word of warning, if you construct something like this, you need to go backand manage those trees because it’s the roots that are integral to stabilizing
the banks, so you have to cut them down every now and again to make surethat the whole structure doesn’t become destabilized.
example.

It’s a good project to go and have a look.

to go to the River Brent.

But it’s a goodIf you go to London, ask

River Restoration
throughFisheries &Conservation Projects
Another big thing in the UK is river restoration through fisheries andconservation projects.

I mentioned at the beginning that fish are a big

interest within the UK and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of weirs inour country and that every one of them stops fish getting upstream so thatthey can’t spawn and it affects the whole lifecycle of those fish.

Sogovernment is talking about this in a big way, can we remove the weirs, how
can we move them, is it safe to remove them, are we confident that we know
how to remove them.
The other side of the problem is that we are talking about how do we look fornatural sources for energy and one of the big natural resources is potentially
increasing the amount of hydropower units we have. If you have a weir, it’sa good place to put the hydropower.

Witham, Lincolnshire••••

Weir no longer used
Fisheries problem
Siltation
Disrupting natural
flow regime• Return free passage• Remove eyesore• Restore natural functions
Gravel ‘riffle’

That’s the one we’ve got to turn around.

So, this is the one – the project that

I was talking about minutes ago. So you’ll often see in the middle of nowhere– in the middle of the countryside, weirs, like this, apparently for no reason.
They’re probably related to historical milling or something like that.

Usually,

that’s what it is.

And you look around and there’s no mill anymore. There’s

no infrastructure.

There’s nothing and so, in this particular case, there was areal opportunity to just take that small structure down.
People get very, very uncomfortable without taking even small structures likethis at rivers because they think it’s going to change their natural processes.
So this is a really good opportunity here to try it because it didn’t matter if
there was a problem when river moved because that would be catastrophic
and this is the river a little while later and you can see by taking the weir out
and putting in some gravels to create a natural river riffle.

Quite quickly, it

looks very, very natural and vegetation started to grow on there as well and soit’s quite an easy thing to do and can be done quite quickly and cost effectively
as well and it improves the fish passage as well.
I would say in this particular river system, we’re not talking about salmon andtrout that would jump over that weir with no problem at all.

We’re talking

about what we call coarse fish which like this kind of habitat and really don’t
like jumping over even small weirs like this.

Inchewan Burn, Scotland（左の図の説明）So, there’s a bit of a conflict there between those two elements of what wehave to deal with and it’s still not resolved.

However, from a point of view ofriver restoration, we would prefer to remove the weirs if we can and in termsof – oh, I’ve got some pictures of the weir.

And I had a picture of some weirs

but I don’t know where they’ve gone.
I may have deleted them by mistake actually when I was looking at them but
I have another version so I can put them back on but I had a good picture ofa weir beforehand and then the weir being removed and then putting in somegravels in the bottom of the river and then allowing those gravels to shift
around within the river to create a mixture of habitats for the fish and allow
fish to then go upstream but also to ensure that the river was still stable byputting in those gravels. I’ll find the picture and give it to you in a minute
here because I think that’s what I might have done. I might have taken it outof this presentation maybe at the start. So, I apologize for that but I have it.
But fish is also very important in terms of this example here. I talked about
the fish being important in the UK. It’s even mostly important in Scotland.
Scotland and salmon are very, very important. This whole industry of salmon

is very important. And often the fish can’t get out to the spawning groundagain and this is a brilliant example of a small stream – that is a river and it’sdifficult to believe it but it is a river. What happened to this particular river isthat there was a roadway put across the river and the local council was very
concerned that if there was any movement in this river, it could undermine theroad and it’s a very high energy river with lots of mobile gravel in it.
So they decided that when they built the road that they would put in lots andlots of wire and hold all the gravel in place on the banks and the bed.

But,

unfortunately, because there’s so much erosion in this river, it just pulled
everything out and to make matters worse because there are big holes inthese big gravel baskets, the water just disappeared underneath while there
was none at the top, so there was no chance of any fish ever getting upstream
to a very nice natural river.
So they decided after a lot of discussion with the River Restoration Centre,that what we could do is to replicate the upstream channel but to put in some
big stones that were concreted into the bank – I’m sorry – into the bed andthat the small bits of gravel from upstream would then start to make a morenatural bed but it would be safe for the road because actually the whole of the
big stones were actually concreted into the bed of the river and would staythere and support the road.
（右の図の説明）So, this is it’s under construction.

You can see here that the wire hasdisappeared and they’re starting to put in some infrastructure into the riverand this is that same river that has actually been restored and each of these
big stones here is cemented into the bottom of the river and it looks really
good and it was done about 5 years ago and I saw this river this year and it’s
still looking really good and the fish can now get up and spawn upstream. So,
you can always do something.

River Rehabilitation
Further afield in
EuropeSo the last bit I really want to talk to you about is just feasible examples in theUK, but like everybody else, we learned lessons from other countries and as
part of one of the river restoration projects that we were involved with, theRiver Skjern, which is on our website. This was 10 years ago or so – wejoined with Denmark, who also restored a much bigger river, and this is kind of
an aspirational thing that, I think, everybody can learn from.

River Basin and Project Area

So, this is Denmark.

You can have a look afterwards and see what Denmark

looks like. Up to the north of United Kingdom and it’s on this side – thewestern side of Denmark and this is the catchment here and the restoration bitthat was restored was this downstream here. And you can probably see here,
it’s about straight and if you know anything about a lot of the Norwegian andDanish-type landscape, it’s very, very flat.
There’s been a lot of agriculture over time and what they have done is they’ve
put in what’s called dikes and big levees on either side of their rivers and theirrivers are really no more than big water courses through the countryside withno natural diversity at all.

Lessons from Europe“ In England when we see flooded fields we see it as a sign of failure. In
Holland it is a feature of a working water management system”
John Prescott

Denmark

River Skjern. Late 60’s

Denmark’s largest landdrainage scheme, 4000ha
wetlands lost. Deepened,straightened, embanked
and pump-drained……………………………………..………
……………todays cost £22M.
And you see big tracks of land like this and you can see very, very intense
agriculture, very intense, and then the river just going through here. But it’s
not really sustainable.
This type of agriculture, because you’ve changed the natural dynamics of thewater and its link to the flood plain, requires a lot of fertilization, it requires a
lot of irrigation and over the time, that affects the land and now what they
were actually growing on here wasn’t great particularly cost-effective anyway.
So, the aspiration is to try and restore this very undynamic river.

Before: Highway for water bordered by dikes

This is what I was talking about. These big dikes here stop any water going
into their surrounding flood plain and then the flood plain is then drained aswell, big pumping stations are to make sure that the land stayed very dry, but
not cost effective either.

River Skjern ready to bend again

So this is that that particular project when it was under construction and again,
a lot of design but the aim was to try and restore the river and try and allow it
to link into the flood plains, reconnect to that flood plain and get those flood
plain processes back working, very important for wetland birds in thisparticular case. There’s a lot of migration of birds from one place to the otherwithin the UK but up to Denmark as well.

Nature areas and intensive farmland side byside

And that is that river actually in floods. You can see the difference between
the part where there hasn’t been any restoration that was before, and this big
wetland area that now occurs when the river comes out into the flood plain.
So, that’s the kind of thing that we’re really trying to link all those elements
together.

River Restoration encompasses many‘ideals’• Integrated catchment
management•

Understand the processes
involved, the inter-relationshipbetween the river, its
floodplain and the catchment.

•

Build this knowledge into thedesign at an early stage.

•

Involve all functions to ensurethat the project is appropriate
and can meet its objectives.

• Multi-disciplinary teams– Engineering– Geomorphology– Hydrology– Water Quality– Ecology/Conservation– Fisheries– Landscape– etc….

So I think the main importance of what I’ve been trying to say is that riverrestoration encompasses many, many ideas and you have to be prepared tolink engineering with ecology, with social sciences, with economics. All of
those things are equally important.

You need to understand your water

quality is very, very important in terms of any river restoration.
You have to understand what your historic landscape is and you have tounderstand the natural processes of river which vary from river type to river
type. And also how much water you have and when you have that water.
How much water is used, extracted, and how much water you have during
floods and they will start to help you understand what you can do to restore
your river.
So if you understand those processes and you understand the wholecatchment and also linking it with the flood plain, you have more opportunity
to try and restore everything back that’s economically viable. And you needto understand that at the beginning, before you even start doing the riverrestoration projects, no good thinking about it later on, and that’s why theWater Framework Directive is really good because it’s made every country
think about their river at the catchment scale, understand each of their river
systems, and that helps you to think about what you can do to restore yourriver.
And the other important thing is to involve all these teams of people and the
local community at the beginning of a project so that you can make sure thateverybody is in agreement as to what the objective of your project is and what
are the limitations of what you could do.

Rivers: the Future• River restoration to deliver sustainable and economic‘ecological’ river management.
• Providing valuable social benefits but must engage with locallycommunities early.
• Strategic planning at the catchment scale can maximise
opportunities and help minimise the constraints requires longterm thinking.
• Need to monitor these new project…. Monitoring guidance
PRAGMO for ALL types of monitoring.

So, what are we going to do in the future?

We’ve come a long way, I think,over the sort of last 10-20 years of river restoration and don’t forget that it’s
still quite a new science or a new discipline. Everybody understands a little
bit about linkage. It’s still very new, relatively speaking, and it’s difficult topull that information together.
What we’re trying to do is restore rivers so that we can link sustainable andeconomic ecological river management. So, it’s those two elements.
We must also think about the social side of things. That’s equally importantand, as I mentioned before, we need to really think about the community thatlives by that river before we start doing our restoration or implementing our
restoration and visions and aspirations.
Catchment scale is absolutely essential in terms of understanding what you’regoing to do in one place and what the constraints might be and you need tothink about that in terms of the short term and the longer term as well.
And, finally, where we’ve got to now, we have, certainly, in the UK, carried out
a lot of different types of river restoration projects. We have a database thathas about 2000 projects or so. Some are very small, some are very big, butwhat government is now asking is, well, okay, there’s all these restoration
projects but how can you demonstrate whether they are successful or not. Is
it worth us investing any money in the future river restoration or shall we
discontinue to put high walls and leave it as a sewer with lots of rubbish in it.
You’ve got to show us the inside side of things how can you demonstrate thatit’s been successful.
And so what we did is we put together this document that has guidelines on
how to have integrated monitoring and it’s not just meant for detailed
scientific evidence collection, which can be very, very expensive andtime-consuming.

It’s also looking about how you can help get global

communities involved to collect data appropriately to help demonstrate thatthese projects have been successful. And, in fact, even by getting people
enthusiastic about their local river, you could argue, is one step towards
saying that the projects and restoring rivers is a good thing to do and can bea very successful thing to do.
So, that’s where we are in the UK. We’re just getting to that point of we’ve
got quite a lot of experience and the techniques and what works – we think
what works and what doesn’t but we don’t have the evidence to support what
we’ve done.

＜質疑＞Moderator
Okay. Thank you. So, are there any questions? You can ask anything.
Male Participant
Thank you for your presentation.

So I’ve heard of Greenberg Policy inEngland, so Greenberg Policy has function of environmental and ecologicalcorridor. So, I have a question. Does the Greenberg Policy include the riverand river management?
Dr. Jenny Mant
It should do. Yes, you say, it’s a policy. It’s an idea and there’s also a thingcalled Blue Corridors. The idea or the concept is that it should think about therivers. It’s a concept that is a local community – I’m sorry – local government
concept.
To start with, the idea of green planning, green infrastructure didn’t
necessarily think about the rivers but it’s interesting that a lot of local
governments have found that where their green corridors are, are next to theriver, and so now they’re thinking maybe we need a river restoration strategy
for our river because this is how we can best connect all of our different partsof the corridor. So it’s the other way around but in a lot and lot of places,
they’re finding that that’s actually what’s happening. So, the two things arenaturally linking together which is good.
Male Participant
Thank you.
Moderator
Okay. Another question? In Japanese? No.
Male Participant
Thank you for your presentation. I went to the Jubilee River 5 years ago.
Jubilee River, when you started construction of this project?
Dr. Jenny Mant

Where was it constructed? When was it completed?
Male Participant
Started?
Dr. Jenny Mant
When was it studied or constructed, I’m sorry?
Male Participant
I think it’s not clear [ph], so we will have someone else…
Moderator
Yeah, when was it started?
Dr. Jenny Mant
When was it started?

What the design before – I think it was about – they

started thinking about it a long time ago, about 20 years ago. Yes, because
there was a lot of problems on the river. There’s an invasive plant in the UK
which is a big problem and it’s actually – I don’t know whether you’ve heard it
but it’s called Japanese knotweed. It’s a plant you have here that tastes likerhubarb when the plant is small. I don’t know…
Male Participant
Smaller – bulbar.
Dr. Jenny Mant
It’s long, tall, and has leaves like this.
Male Participant
I see.
Dr. Jenny Mant
And it’s a native plant to Japan but it likes our rivers and it grows everywhere
and other plants don’t grow. In the Jubilee River, there were lots and lots ofJapanese knotweed, which had to be removed when they started the project.
The problem is you have to contain it because it grows through concrete,through anything really, and there was also a lot of contaminated material sothey had to decide how to deal with that.

So it took about 20 years for the

project to be designed but it was completed in, I think, 1992 or thereabouts.
It’s quite an old project and it’s been there for quite a long time. It took, I
think, about 3 or 4 years to construct if I remember rightly, quite a long periodof time.
Male Participant
Okay.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Okay.
Moderator
Are there any questions?
Male Participant
I know that you do have a lot of knowledge of the various restoration projects
or something, so I want some leads. The Thames River was biologically built
at the time of the industrial revolution of England. So my question is if we didsome vegetation project or if we want to grow some vegetated area aroundthe Dez [ph] River, that we should consider the quality of the river bottom
because without making biologically alive the river bottom we cannot do any
vegetation or green protection. So, I don’t know how long time it took at thattime to alive the Thames River from the dead to alive?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Okay.

I don’t know.

I don’t know how long.

I’ve no idea.

It’s beensomething that’s sort of been talked about through my lifetime and I know it
was, you say, a problem and then probably about 10 years ago, there was anannouncement that actually they had found some salmon going up theThames, so it’s very difficult to know because there was a lot of sewage going
into the river not treated properly and, gradually, over a long period of time;
10, 20, 30 years they improved the amount of discharge adjusted going into
the river, so it’s difficult to know how long it really took and it’s not still perfectnow.

It’s better and it can support wildlife. So if you have a river and the water
quality is bad, you could probably, if you had enough money and you wanted
to improve every area, identify every area where there was an issue with thewater quality, you could probably fix it relatively quickly in a few years
because the Water Framework is saying over a period of 10 to 15 years, we
expect you to improve the water quality significantly in all your rivers. So it
can be relatively short and quite easy to fix but, of course, it takes a lot ofmoney and change in the infrastructure to do now.
Male Participant
The second, in the previous moment, a few years ago or maybe 20 or 40 years
ago, we didn’t have that much information about the industrial revolution
effect on the river but now we have the many examples of how the industrial
revolution or encroachment or something like that or you can say thedevelopment; development that stopped the river life.
So, in this moment, we can stop or we can shout our voice to stop – not stopsuch type of work but before doing this type of development, we can takesome prior project, how can we alive the river or something like this? So, in
this moment, we can do like this, before developing any industrial project orsomething, we should consider about the river or the drainage system?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Absolutely, yeah, and that’s why I mentioned sustainable urban drainage, somaking sure that when you’re thinking about restoring your river or if you
have a river near to a development, you make sure that you implement theright drainage and you have space along the side of your river with morenatural vegetation to help reduce the amount of pollutants getting into theriver and it’s not just industry, of course. Roads are terrible – absolutely
terrible for pollutants getting into the rivers really.
So, yeah, it should be always considered as part of anything that you’re doing.
And also although you need to improve the water quality by thinking about
making sure that you have some habitat features or make sure that your river
isn’t too wide with the amount of water you have in it. That can improve theoxygenation in the water, which can help disperse the water quality as well.
So, there is a rationale for doing some restoration at the same time as youwere trying to improve your water quality so that the habitats can then form
as you improve your water quality. Okay.
Male Participant
Yeah.
Moderator
Now, let me ask questions. Do you know what I want?
Male Participant
May I ask here two questions? One is for funding. So I think that globallythe fund comes from the government, local or central. So is there any – Imean, other than the governments, like landowners or private companies?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Okay. You’re right. A lot of the money comes from the government or has
done recently, not in the past, but more recently because of the Water
Framework Directive and a recognition that if we don’t restore our rivers thenthe Central European government will fine the country and there have beenvarious other directives, the Nitrates Directive, for example, and in Brussels,
the central government will fine the country very heavily, so they know thatthey have to put some money in.
However, I mentioned that fishing and local communities love fishing and wehave a lot of fishing clubs and some of them are private and you have to pay
a lot of money to belong to that fishing club and that money is collected andoften used then to restore the river. So, that’s a really good source of funding
for river restoration.
Probably a third part, in Europe, there is funding for environmental benefits
and groups of people and charities can apply for that money to do restoration
work. So there are different places and sometimes it will be local landowners
who will say I want to restore my river but they usually have an economic
driver for doing it, i.e., they want to restore their river because then they knowthat more people will pay to come to fish and then they can have the revenue
from it. So, yeah, but maybe that’s me being cynical but I think it’s probably
the truth, but it doesn’t matter. It’s another way of getting money.
Male Participant
Okay and the other one is that you mentioned about the sediment perhaps.
So, what kind of sediment probably is severe in rivers?
Dr. Jenny Mant
It depends where you are.
It depends on the type of river but probably the main concern that we have iswhen you have fine silt or fine sediment that has come from the fields thataren’t managed properly and the sediments just come straight into the field orfrom the roads and obviously the roads contaminate it in one way but if you
included the fields, you will have a lot of fertilizers in those sediments as welland the problem is if you get a lot of fine sediment in the system, it will often
deposit where you have a wider section of river which might be supporting anice gravel habitat for fish to spawn and if it then sits on the top of that it willintersperse in the gravel and stop the fish to spawn in that area, so it’s
probably fine to learn what’s more of a problem mostly, not in ways but
generally speaking.
Male Participant
It posed a problem on the habitat?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yes.
Male Participant
And that’s where the problem is really, it’s for the…?
Dr. Jenny Mant
For the habitats, yeah.
[Japanese]

Male Participant
Please show me – in regard to slide on the Eau River…
Dr. Jenny Mant
Eau.
Male Participant
Eau River.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Oh, yeah, got it.
Male Participant
Please show your slide.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Okay.
Male Participant
The college staff is up to it.
Dr. Jenny Mant
It’s in the middle. You should have done it the other way. There you go.
Which one? This one?
Male ParticipantThis one.
Dr. Jenny Mant
This one?
Male Participant
Not this one, after that slide.
Dr. Jenny Mant

This one?
Male ParticipantYeah, this one.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yes.
Male Participant
So, in this case the farm on right side has become weaker than left side.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yes, because they deliberately dropped – yes, so that the water could go out.
Male Participant
Other version, so can the farmer of the right side receive any compensation?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Compensation.
Male ParticipantCompensation, yeah.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yeah. That’s usually the way. That’s something else that I didn’t mention
but, again, we have a European policy for farmers where they can apply formoney for secured streams [ph]. They are a part of the agricultural policy
and if they say they are happy to have environmental benefits to their field
and take some of the agriculture out of production, they can claim money ascompensation.
Male Participant
They can. Thank you very much.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yes. It’s a very good point. It’s all financially driven. Everything has got

money attached to it but, yeah. I think in this case, actually, the farmer – I’m
not sure the farmer did have a subsidy for it but, generally speaking, they justhappen to be very happy which is why we used it as a case study but, usually,
you would expect the farmer to ask for some money to do the work, I think so.
Male ParticipantOkay. Thank you.
[Japanese]Moderator
Are there any other questions?
Male Participant
Is it really difficult to make that kind of agreement to the farmers andmanagement?
Dr. Jenny Mant
It depends. What tends to happen is you will find out the farmers who arekeen and enthusiastic and work with them and then sometimes what we try to
do is to get the other farmers to come and have a look at these case studies
and sometimes they would say, oh yes, I like this idea. It’s good, I’m happy.
Please, can you come and help me in my farm. But then you will get others,
usually farmers who have been farming for many, many years and they say,no, I’m not changing my way of farming and you have no choice. You justhave to say, okay, in 10 years’ time maybe, but not today.
Male Participant
You said that for the WFD, the directive, you have to reach the goal in 2015 –in 2012. Do you believe that it’s possible to achieve 100%?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Well there is another goal, 2027.
Male Participant
I see.

Dr. Jenny Mant
And then it continues. The Water Framework doesn’t stop. There it says
and an X number of years afterwards.

I think the last one is – I can’t

remember but it’s when I will retire, so maybe by 2020. But 2027 – 2015,
2027, and what the governments have been asked to do within the River BasinManagement Plans is to be realistic and they have said we can restore apercentage by 2012 and that these are where we are going to focus and wewill have restored another percentage by 2027.
So as long as they have identified that at this point and they manage to dowhat they have said they will do then that’s fine but if they say we’re going torestore 80% by 2015 and just restore 20%, then they’ll get in trouble. So, a
lot of the countries have been very cautious about what they can actuallyachieve by 2015.
Male Participant
You said about the good ecological status and a good ecological potential?
Dr. Jenny Mant
Yeah.
Male Participant
So, a good ecological potential means a lot of present situations?
Dr. Jenny Mant
For a good ecological status, it has to be as natural and as pristine and as
perfect as you can get.

Good ecological potential says there are big

constraints in this river but actually what can I still do to improve it. And if,
for example, that means putting some habitat edging and that’s all you can doit. That’s the best good ecological potential that you can get to. You can’t
make every single habitat but you can improve it, so that’s the best potentialthat you can get towards being natural without taking all the infrastructure.
So, that’s the difference. It’s a realism measure.
Male Participant

So, in this what case would be the good…?
[Multiple Speakers]
Dr. Jenny Mant
Essentially, yeah. Well, the problem is that the environment agency and theequivalent in Scotland and every country have identified their rivers based on
local expertise and the local expertise is different in one place to another andso in 2012 were the first River Basin Management Plans and then there was a
big consultation across the country and everybody – anybody in the country
could look at the plans and they would look at them and say, but you said myriver is natural and I know it’s not natural because there is a weir here andthere’s a concrete bank here.
So, they would have to go and review all of those plans to see if they arecorrect and so it’s a difficult decision to make as to how many rivers are
actually natural and how many aren’t and what parameters you’re going toapply to make those decisions and they do differ and they are changing again.
But there is a framework there to make those decisions, which is good. It’s
not a precise science.

It can’t be.

[Japanese]
Female Participant
Thank you for your presentation. I just have one question about you told tous that you go through like the history like how the river was created andthat’s in order to differentiate and I just found out like how long like maybe
you have a go at it in order to actively pursue it?
Dr. Jenny Mant
That’s a very good question.

It’s a very good question and it’s a very

academic question because a lot of rivers, you can’t restore back to somenatural river system that was maybe 500 years ago because it would be
impossible. So what we tend to do is look at the maps that we have, whichusually are about 100 and 120 years old, and look to see what evidence there
is of change over that period and sometimes you will see very clearly wherethe river used to be, what it used to look like, and you can use that informationand that evidence.
Sometimes the change has happened before then and if that’s the case, thenyou also need to look at the history in terms of the use of the water, how muchwater has been extracted from the river and identify how much water you now
have in the river. The historical evidence also looks at how the land might
have been used. Is there any contaminated land, for example, where youwant to restore your river?
So when you look at the history, you are looking at lots of different things, notjust where the river may have been. You’re trying to inform a picture to makedecisions based on your understanding of that particular river catchment-type
to help you make sure you have the best decision-making process for yourproject. Does that answer your question? It’s not straight.

It’s not one

single thing. There are lots of different bits that you need to look at.
Moderator
Anyone? [Japanese]. Maybe a bit shy to ask here but maybe ask personally.
Okay. So, thank you for that excellent lecture.
Dr. Jenny Mant
Thank you. But if you have any other questions you can always e-mail thecentre and ask.
Moderator
Yes.
[Japanese]Moderator
Yes, so I have the Japanese version of the PRAGMO that we don’t have in here
and you can access it on the internet on this site and you’ll translate it to
English.
[Japanese]Moderator
Yes, you can read it.

It’s in Japanese.

[Japanese]
Dr. Jenny Mant
You can find it on our website in English.
Moderator
Thank you so much. I will download it.
[Japanese]
Dr. Jenny Mant
Okay.
Moderator
Okay.
[Japanese]
Dr. Jenny Mant
Thank you.
[Japanese][Multiple Speakers]
END