Across the country, volunteer groups are finding ways to help their community slow the flow of rainwater.
Sometimes, as in Slow The Flow’s case. their primary motivation is to reduce flood risk. For ‘Save Water To Save The Trym’, the key driver was to improve water quality entering rivers. Sustainable drainage solutions (SuDS), that mimic the way water behaves in nature, have multiple benefits, which is one of the reasons we advocate them over traditional ‘hard engineering’ solutions.
Peter Coleman-Smith shares the learnings from their inspirational water butts project below.
What can locals do?
Slowing the flow into Bristol’s River Trym
The River Trym is a completely urban, much-loved stream running through green spaces, parks, Westbury on Trym town centre and other suburbs. 80,000 or so Bristolians live within a mile or so of its waters. However, it often looks polluted, sometimes smells bad and has way less biodiversity (riverfly life, fish and aquatic plants) than might be expected. Dog owners and parents letting their charges swim in it may be taking bigger risks than they realise.
Tired of this and seeing little urgency from the authorities to do anything a small group of volunteers looked into the causes.
It turned out there are many. Misconnected drains (eg from wrongly plumbed in house extensions) contribute grey water and sewage; roads and car parks add oil, brake and tyre dust (microplastics); roadside drains deliver ‘thrown away’ oil, paint, plaster-flushings and silt from building sites; and gardens/parks leach fertilizers and chemicals (there are no farms in this catchment). A problem with all of these though is that while definitely harming the river they are unquantified. They are sporadic and no one knows how much of an issue they are.
In contrast spills from Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) are monitored and results published. When the group looked into these, the situation revealed was shocking. Despite only being six miles long there are 29 CSOs on the river and in 2024 these overflowed 767 times. The worst CSO spilled 78 times and it’s upstream of a Local Nature Reserve!
By the way, it’s easy – check out the spills in your local area through the website page: Is my river fit to play in?
From dialogue with Wessex Water it became clear that the flow of rainfall from domestic roofs into the combined sewer network was overwhelming the sewage infrastructure in the area. When this happens, rather than allowing untreated waste water to back-up into people’s homes it’s routed into the river. For context, much of the housing in this area was built before 1950 so is on the combined sewer system, this isn’t the case everywhere.
Determined to do something, 4 volunteers set up Save Water to Save the Trym! They raised money and created a project to trial increasing take up of water butts with soaker hoses. The focus was on specific targeted streets connected to problematic CSOs (Wessex Water helpfully shared their maps with the group). A good deal of discussion and bit of trial and error was involved in developing an offer, plus lots of hard work in approaching potential customers.
Ultimately, what was tried worked. In 18 months, over 30,000 litres of new rain storage capacity was created in a small area (fantastic, though it’s too early to say whether it has cut the number of spills from CSOs). Just as important was the learning secured. Soaker hoses proved effective – slowly dripping water into gardens away from houses progressively lowering the level in the butts (when it rains there is spare capacity). A vital lesson was the value from working with (and paying properly) a competent local handy person. Many people were interested in a butt but hadn’t progressed as they didn’t know how to do it or simply weren’t able to. Cheap butts were only part of the answer. An installer, linked to a named scheme, who undertook a pre-installation visit and did the work plus ironed out any post-installation issues, made a massive difference.
Infrastructure Based Solutions cost huge sums and take years. Nature Based Solutions are great but not possible in this part of Bristol. Community Based Solutions (water butts plus rain gardens, education about what not to put down the toilet/drain, etc) are relatively cheap, quick – and have now been demonstrated to have potential to make a real difference if planned and delivered well.
The group shared a summary report with Wessex Water, Bristol City Council, Bristol Avon Catchment Partnership and the Cunliffe Independent Water Commission. Real insight had been gained, it was important to share it and seek action. Dialogue continues.
Conclusion: Urgent action is possible even with very limited funds. There is simply no excuse for inaction. A clear offer targeted at specific locations can be effective if driven hard. Water industry; take note, you can act.
If you’re interested, an electronic copy of the Save Water to Save the Trym! report is available below