Smarter Catchment Monitoring

TECHNICAL VISIT – Nature Based Solutions

Saturday 7th September 09:30-13:00 Technical Visit to a Nature Based Solution - Firs Farm Wetlands (cost included in registration fee, to be booked at registration due to limited spaces)

 Firs Farm integrated constructed wetland is a combined flood storage area and wetland (volume 30,000 m3) and provides a fascinating case study of a success story for how local authorities, NGOs and the local community can work together to create a site with multiple benefits. Located in the London Borough of Enfield, Firs Farm was constructed in 2014 on underused playing fields. Since then it has become a popular community greenspace of enhanced biodiversity, as well as providing flood storage and improvements in water quality from diffuse urban pollution. Enfield has a separate sewage system, meaning that household wastewater is carried by one network of pipes to sewage plants for treatment, whilst rain and surface water travels in a separate pipe system directly into the local rivers. Pollution from misconnected and cross connected plumbing as well as industry and dumping of domestic waste into the surface water network meant that the catchment was failing EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) standards for water quality.

 Firs Farm accepts surface water from a densely urban 216 ha catchment which includes over 4,700 properties. Flow from three surface water drains (including the daylighted Moore Brook) is diverted into two of the cells. The whole site comprises 1,300 m² of wetlands (4 cells), a 1000 m² flood retention pond and a de-culverted woodland water course 500 m in length. The wetlands were constructed by Enfield Council in conjunction with waterways charity Thames21 with funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, extended with funding from Thames Water’s Community Investment Fund. The local community were involved from the outset and assisted with the planting of the wetland cells. There is now huge sense of ownership within the local community with a thriving “Friends of” group who are involved with the maintenance and monitoring of the wetland, including volunteer working parties to control vegetation, assisting with deployment of Environment Agency real-time probes, and holding fundraisers for the upkeep of the wetland. Monitoring has demonstrated significant improvements in water quality, as well as reducing flood risk. In 2017 Firs Farm was highly commended in the Sustainable Water Industry Group (SWIG) awards in the Project category.

 The technical visit is an opportunity to see this site to discuss everything from daylighting, integrated constructed wetland development and nature-based solutions to systems thinking and catchment scale solutions to water quality. The project has successfully involved citizen scientists and created community greenspace assets. We hope you will be able to meet some of the people involved during the visit.