Читать книгу Green and Prosperous Land - Dieter Helm, Dieter Helm - Страница 29

Housing, concreted urban centres and roads bring further pollution and flooding problems to rivers, and they are as much a part of the catchment and its management as the farmers and the water companies. Run-off from roads is often nasty and fast, and housing and factories displace water that would otherwise have soaked into the ground, to be gradually absorbed. Towns and villages were traditionally built to have access to water, and they are often built right up to the riverbanks, which are in turn concreted over and reinforced. The houses and infrastructure reduce the ability of their land areas to absorb rainfall, and increase the speed and rate of run-off.

The solution here is better planning, regulation and pricing. Planning needs to steer development away from floodplains and to require porous roads and driveways to reduce run-off. Better still, unpaved and unconcreted driveways can be planted to encourage biodiversity. Plants absorb water too. The costs of the run-off need to be incorporated into the economics of new developments, thereby creating an incentive to build houses in the right places, and with the right porous green footprints.

Like the mining and the abstraction along rivers, the economic incentives on house-building produce perverse environmental outcomes. Flood insurance should reflect the risk of flooding, but it doesn’t. Instead the flood risk is socialised, so that house prices do not fully capitalise this risk. If others pay some of the costs for locating near a river that floods, more houses will be built in the wrong places. Even worse, the Environment Agency prioritises reducing the risk of flooding to those most at risk. You buy a house in the wrong place, you get your flood risk insurance subsidised (through schemes like Flood Re), and then public money is spent on protecting you.⁹

Town populations have other great economic interests in the state of the rivers. Rivers are an immediate source of leisure for them, and they need access to the clean water. Green banks and riversides bring wider physical and mental benefits too. Many benefit from the tourism that rivers bring. Towns like Ross-on-Wye, Hay-on-Wye, Lechlade, Eynsham and Carlisle all have significant leisure industries and the associated services. The tourism is often more economically important than agriculture, and hence the economics points to an enhanced river environment.