<
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/why-we-should-shatter-melbourne-s-concrete-creeks-20230206-p5cidn.html>
"Residents in Melbourne’s north have welcomed plans to restore the concreted
Moonee Ponds Creek to its original state – one of many creek restoration
projects under way in the city.
But further work is still needed to protect creeks from the impacts of urban
runoff. Doing so will allow us to restore waterways such as Gardiners Creek in
Melbourne’s east, Elwood Canal and Stony Creek in the western suburbs.
In the 1960s the town planning profession was seduced by ambitious engineering
solutions, including the idea we could minimise the threat posed by floods in
our cities by turning our rivers and streams into hydraulically efficient
concrete drains, and our smaller streams and waterways into underground pipes.
Many cities in Australia, including Melbourne, went to work cutting down trees
and pouring concrete.
To some extent, the idea works, save the problems it creates for those people
(and animals) living in communities downstream of the drains who are hit by
vast volumes of fast-moving water after big rain events. Indeed, those
efficient drains mean even small amounts of rain turn into large amounts of
stormwater runoff because they prevent water from infiltrating into the soil
the way it naturally would have.
But over decades, the realisation has dawned that what we might have gained in
cities through flood mitigation has come with the loss of our natural heritage,
our special places and our unique wildlife. We now understand that providing
people with access to nature delivers a truly remarkable array of benefits that
will prove critical to the liveability, indeed future habitability, of our
cities."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
