The SloWaters pilot project, operating since 2019, is paying farmers to slow the flow of water off their lands in times of heavy rains, to help mitigate against the risk of flooding downstream.
The project is headed up by Dr Mary Bourke of Trinity College Dublin, who told the Irish Farmers Journal that she sees the lessons learned from SloWaters as being a blueprint for the nationwide roll out of nature-based solutions capable of significantly reducing the risk of flood damage.
Nature-based solutions to flooding were implemented on demonstration farms participating in the project, which aims to interfere as little as possible with farming activities and output.
This sees measures mostly implemented in ditches or streams, which slow the flow of water in times of heavy rains, before releasing waters into waterways at levels more appropriate for the capacity of rivers and streams.
Peace of mind
Farmers should not fear lands being flooded when implementing properly thought-out measures, according to Dr Bourke.
Slowing down the flow of water does need not see soil trafficability impacted or waters being held for more than a few hours in the demonstration farms involved in the SloWaters project.
In practice, the measures mean that heavy rains that fall during the night can be fully discharged by morning.
This is even the case where measures are put in place which seek to connect a river with its floodplain to lengthen the pathway of the water body. The water is only held temporarily.
Natural solutions
Nature-based solutions include soil bunds constructed around stretches of field margins, hedges to slow the flow of water across fields and leaky timber dams, which slow but do not stop a river’s flow.
When planned and constructed effectively, these nature-based solutions can reduce the damage caused by floods, rather than requiring public funds to engineer and construct additional concrete flood defences, which ultimately do not address flooding risks at source.
The project focuses on implementing unintrusive measures in field margins. / Maura Hickey
Dr Bourke stated that in addition to helping reduce the risk of flooding, research also suggests that slowing the release of rains into waterways can pose benefits to water quality, as sediment is given time to settle back onto land as waters are slowly released.
“As we are slowing down the speed of the flow, there is less erosion, as the waters have less force. When the discharge back into the waterway is slowed, there is a chance for sediment and suspended solids to settle,” she explained to the Irish Farmers Journal.
The project is jointly funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Office of Public Works (OPW).
Keeping farmers central
Dr Bourke insists that putting farmers at the centre of any project is vital to ensuring success when deploying nature-based solutions in areas such as flood risk management.
Farmers should not only have the final say in deciding which measures could be put into action on their land, but they should also help to suggest changes to measures after they are in place.
“Before any measures were adopted, we walked the land with the farmer. Farmers know their own land, they know how the water moves and that is invaluable information for us planning the measures,” she said.
“We then suggest what we think could work and the farmer will give their feedback. We could go through three or four iterations of the plan before we have the final one agreed.
“After that, there may be changes needed as time progresses, and the farmer is the one walking the land every day, seeing how the water flows. The farmer is instrumental in helping us decide what will work.”
Putting farmers at the centre of nature-based solutions to flooding also poses the benefits for researchers and project teams having to provide continual and real-time updates on both the effectiveness and condition of any measures in place on their farm.
Detailed drone-mapping of the high and low points within a field is carried out before installing features, helping to model how water travels across the land.
“This matches up with what farmers tell us about the land. Farmers know their land best and the maps just give us more detail and more accuracy.”
Co Wexford drystock farm demonstration site
A demonstration of some of SloWaters’ measures can be seen on the organic beef and sheep farm of Patrick Gleeson and Caroline Bourke in Ballygow, Co Wexford.
A bund made of compacted soil has been installed in the corner of a field, which runs into a drain and in turn into a stream running through the farm. The work was completed by a local contractor with an excavator at a cost of €2,500, which was paid for with project funds.
The bund was a work in progress and maintenance works were competed twice: once to extend the bund after it was decided it was not long enough, and another to repair the bund after severe flooding blew a hole in it.
A four-inch pipe slowly discharges the water into this drain when flood levels are low, with a larger opening in the middle of the bund allowing for overflow at times of heavier rains, but still, at a rate slower than if the bund had not been constructed.
“The discussions we had before putting anything in place definitely helped with confidence,” Murphy told the Irish Farmers Journal.
“I wanted to be sure I wasn’t left with a lake and if there is anything suggested that I didn’t think would work, we could make changes to the plans until they suited me.
“When you see the bund in the field, and you can barely notice it and having in there does not have any major impact on the field itself, the grass grows.”
Biodiversity and water quality
There are other measures not currently being implemented on Murphy’s farm, which could be considered in the future with more backing in an agri-environmental scheme or an extension of the SloWaters project.
Dr Bourke explained that rectifying soil compaction will improve a field’s drainage capacity and help reduce the volumes of water flowing across land.
Multispecies swards containing plants with tap roots can also achieve similar effects and with complementary benefits to biodiversity and animal performance.
Popular measures under current or past agri-environmental schemes, which could deliver for biodiversity, water quality and mitigating the risk of flooding, are buffer zones, establishing hedgerows and installing ponds.
"Before any measures were adopted, we walked the land with the farmer. Farmers know their own land, they know how the water moves." \ Maura Hickey
“Ponds are great, especially when we are talking about a chain of ponds linked together.
“But it can even be hedgerows planted in the right places. They connect habitats and act to slow down water moving across a field,” Dr Bourke said.
The measures more suited to hill and peatland areas include rows of leaky dams constructed of wood, which again, slow the flow of water but do not stop it.
“But when it comes to peatlands, drain blocking can completely change the problem of flooding,” Dr Bourke stated.
How could nature-based
solutions be funded?
The Government plans on creating a €14bn infrastructure, climate and nature fund, which Department of Finance officials have stated could be used to invest in nature-based flood prevention solutions.
However, as the fund will only cater for capital spending, it is unlikely that farmers participating in any new agri-environmental initiatives backed by the fund will receive a yearly payment for participation.
€60m project
A €60m Water EIP project was also announced this summer, which Teagasc has said could pay farmers for installing features, including small-scale ponds, earthen bunds, sediment traps and new hedgerows.
The project will run until 2028 and the Teagasc-led Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme (ASSAP) will play a role in ensuring that right measures are funded for the right place to achieve a positive payback for water quality.
Both funds pose possible funding streams for the roll out of nature-based solutions, which could pay farmers to prevent floods.
“The research has already been done, we have the information. What we need to see now is these measures being included in Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), being available to more farmers,” Dr Bourke insists.
“We would see real results, particularly with energetic and fast floods, if we had one in every field or even one in every two or three fields beside a river.
“Funding needs to cover the cost of putting these measures in and they are not necessarily costly features to install when using local, natural materials like soil and trees.
“But there also has to be an element of compensation for the farmers involved – an incentive. Funding models that have been looked at even include landowners being paid per flood,” she said.
The SloWaters pilot project, operating since 2019, is paying farmers to slow the flow of water off their lands in times of heavy rains, to help mitigate against the risk of flooding downstream.
The project is headed up by Dr Mary Bourke of Trinity College Dublin, who told the Irish Farmers Journal that she sees the lessons learned from SloWaters as being a blueprint for the nationwide roll out of nature-based solutions capable of significantly reducing the risk of flood damage.
Nature-based solutions to flooding were implemented on demonstration farms participating in the project, which aims to interfere as little as possible with farming activities and output.
This sees measures mostly implemented in ditches or streams, which slow the flow of water in times of heavy rains, before releasing waters into waterways at levels more appropriate for the capacity of rivers and streams.
Peace of mind
Farmers should not fear lands being flooded when implementing properly thought-out measures, according to Dr Bourke.
Slowing down the flow of water does need not see soil trafficability impacted or waters being held for more than a few hours in the demonstration farms involved in the SloWaters project.
In practice, the measures mean that heavy rains that fall during the night can be fully discharged by morning.
This is even the case where measures are put in place which seek to connect a river with its floodplain to lengthen the pathway of the water body. The water is only held temporarily.
Natural solutions
Nature-based solutions include soil bunds constructed around stretches of field margins, hedges to slow the flow of water across fields and leaky timber dams, which slow but do not stop a river’s flow.
When planned and constructed effectively, these nature-based solutions can reduce the damage caused by floods, rather than requiring public funds to engineer and construct additional concrete flood defences, which ultimately do not address flooding risks at source.
The project focuses on implementing unintrusive measures in field margins. / Maura Hickey
Dr Bourke stated that in addition to helping reduce the risk of flooding, research also suggests that slowing the release of rains into waterways can pose benefits to water quality, as sediment is given time to settle back onto land as waters are slowly released.
“As we are slowing down the speed of the flow, there is less erosion, as the waters have less force. When the discharge back into the waterway is slowed, there is a chance for sediment and suspended solids to settle,” she explained to the Irish Farmers Journal.
The project is jointly funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Office of Public Works (OPW).
Keeping farmers central
Dr Bourke insists that putting farmers at the centre of any project is vital to ensuring success when deploying nature-based solutions in areas such as flood risk management.
Farmers should not only have the final say in deciding which measures could be put into action on their land, but they should also help to suggest changes to measures after they are in place.
“Before any measures were adopted, we walked the land with the farmer. Farmers know their own land, they know how the water moves and that is invaluable information for us planning the measures,” she said.
“We then suggest what we think could work and the farmer will give their feedback. We could go through three or four iterations of the plan before we have the final one agreed.
“After that, there may be changes needed as time progresses, and the farmer is the one walking the land every day, seeing how the water flows. The farmer is instrumental in helping us decide what will work.”
Putting farmers at the centre of nature-based solutions to flooding also poses the benefits for researchers and project teams having to provide continual and real-time updates on both the effectiveness and condition of any measures in place on their farm.
Detailed drone-mapping of the high and low points within a field is carried out before installing features, helping to model how water travels across the land.
“This matches up with what farmers tell us about the land. Farmers know their land best and the maps just give us more detail and more accuracy.”
Co Wexford drystock farm demonstration site
A demonstration of some of SloWaters’ measures can be seen on the organic beef and sheep farm of Patrick Gleeson and Caroline Bourke in Ballygow, Co Wexford.
A bund made of compacted soil has been installed in the corner of a field, which runs into a drain and in turn into a stream running through the farm. The work was completed by a local contractor with an excavator at a cost of €2,500, which was paid for with project funds.
The bund was a work in progress and maintenance works were competed twice: once to extend the bund after it was decided it was not long enough, and another to repair the bund after severe flooding blew a hole in it.
A four-inch pipe slowly discharges the water into this drain when flood levels are low, with a larger opening in the middle of the bund allowing for overflow at times of heavier rains, but still, at a rate slower than if the bund had not been constructed.
“The discussions we had before putting anything in place definitely helped with confidence,” Murphy told the Irish Farmers Journal.
“I wanted to be sure I wasn’t left with a lake and if there is anything suggested that I didn’t think would work, we could make changes to the plans until they suited me.
“When you see the bund in the field, and you can barely notice it and having in there does not have any major impact on the field itself, the grass grows.”
Biodiversity and water quality
There are other measures not currently being implemented on Murphy’s farm, which could be considered in the future with more backing in an agri-environmental scheme or an extension of the SloWaters project.
Dr Bourke explained that rectifying soil compaction will improve a field’s drainage capacity and help reduce the volumes of water flowing across land.
Multispecies swards containing plants with tap roots can also achieve similar effects and with complementary benefits to biodiversity and animal performance.
Popular measures under current or past agri-environmental schemes, which could deliver for biodiversity, water quality and mitigating the risk of flooding, are buffer zones, establishing hedgerows and installing ponds.
"Before any measures were adopted, we walked the land with the farmer. Farmers know their own land, they know how the water moves." \ Maura Hickey
“Ponds are great, especially when we are talking about a chain of ponds linked together.
“But it can even be hedgerows planted in the right places. They connect habitats and act to slow down water moving across a field,” Dr Bourke said.
The measures more suited to hill and peatland areas include rows of leaky dams constructed of wood, which again, slow the flow of water but do not stop it.
“But when it comes to peatlands, drain blocking can completely change the problem of flooding,” Dr Bourke stated.
How could nature-based
solutions be funded?
The Government plans on creating a €14bn infrastructure, climate and nature fund, which Department of Finance officials have stated could be used to invest in nature-based flood prevention solutions.
However, as the fund will only cater for capital spending, it is unlikely that farmers participating in any new agri-environmental initiatives backed by the fund will receive a yearly payment for participation.
€60m project
A €60m Water EIP project was also announced this summer, which Teagasc has said could pay farmers for installing features, including small-scale ponds, earthen bunds, sediment traps and new hedgerows.
The project will run until 2028 and the Teagasc-led Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme (ASSAP) will play a role in ensuring that right measures are funded for the right place to achieve a positive payback for water quality.
Both funds pose possible funding streams for the roll out of nature-based solutions, which could pay farmers to prevent floods.
“The research has already been done, we have the information. What we need to see now is these measures being included in Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), being available to more farmers,” Dr Bourke insists.
“We would see real results, particularly with energetic and fast floods, if we had one in every field or even one in every two or three fields beside a river.
“Funding needs to cover the cost of putting these measures in and they are not necessarily costly features to install when using local, natural materials like soil and trees.
“But there also has to be an element of compensation for the farmers involved – an incentive. Funding models that have been looked at even include landowners being paid per flood,” she said.
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: