For a variety of reasons, Run Off from higher ground and Flooding are becoming more common, year on year, often with devastating consequences for land and infrastructure alike.
Some of the solutions must necessarily be at the societal scale but others are more accessible to communities and individual landowners.
A natural & sustainable solution, that is relatively accessible and affordable at any scale, is the installation of “leaky dams” to slow the flow.

More Details

This is the use of living willow hurdles as reinforcement for an existing or modified river bank and as the retaining wall on a terrace system designed to prevent soil slippage on steep or vulnerable banks. The hurdles are usually made on site by weaving flexible live willow rods around thicker live willow posts driven into the ground at intervals. Soil is back filled behind the live willow hurdle enabling the woven live willow rods to root into the soil further stabilising the bank.

Brush matting is used to protect river banks that are vulnerable to scouring when a river is in spate. Live willow rods are laid on the bank with their butts dug into a trench. The live willow rods are anchored to the bank with rods and pegs. This has the effect of creating a barrier of willow protecting the river bank. Protection of the bank is further enhanced when the willow rods take root binding the soil with their fibrous root system. New growth above ground will also protect the bank by absorbing the energy of fast moving water.

Bundles of live willow known as faggots or fascines are placed in trenches dug across a slope. These prevent any further erosion down the slope and as the willow grows it traps any eroding soil to further stabilise the slope. This is a popular method in mountainous areas of Europe subject to the erosion of steep slopes by water.

As the name suggests this is filtering a range of bio degradable waste matter using plants. Willows have many qualities, most notably super fast growth and sheer toughness and versatility which make them suitable for a wide range of filtration purposes. The most simple and direct example is to use farm slurry or treated sewage as a fertiliser on a willow biomass plantation. Being super fast growing willow can absorb large amounts of waste and nutrients that would otherwise be toxic in such large amounts and convert it into useful biomass that can then be converted into heat and/or energy. Buffer zones of willow are often planted to intercept fertiliser run off from modern intensive farms thereby protecting rivers and watercourses from excess nitrification which undermines natural river ecology. When river levels are low in summer willow plantations planted on land fill sites are used to re cycle toxic run off, again preventing toxins from entering the surrounding watercourses.