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Memorandum from British Waterways (GJS05)
1. Executive summary
· Waterways are local, adaptable and accessible. · Waterways are becoming increasingly relevant as one of the means for tackling climate change. · They form part of the nation's green infrastructure that can be used for sustainable transport, particularly for walking and cycling but also to carry niche freight cargoes, and to help mitigate the impacts of climate change. · Extending the walking and cycling network supports the construction industry creating local jobs and training opportunities, encourages modal shift from car to foot and cycle reducing CO2 emissions and congestion, improves health and well being of local people and visitors and helps to transform neighbourhoods. · Businesses can and do use their local waterway to heat and cool their premises and to move and supply grey water reducing CO2 emissions. · British Waterways is exploiting the potential of the waterways to generate clean electricity through small hydro and wind power. · The majority of the benefits described will only be delivered through partnership with the public, private and third sectors. · Potential private and public sector partners need encouragement to realise the benefits described, with investment required to improve the quality of the resource and help realise the Government's vision for improving the quality of place - "World Class Places".
2. About British Waterways
2.1. British Waterways is a not-for-dividend public corporation which cares for a nationwide network of canals, rivers, docks and reservoirs. It is accountable to the Department of the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in England and Wales and to the Scottish Government in Scotland and works with a broad range of public, private and voluntary sector partners to protect and find new uses for the nation's historic waterways.
2.2. Our priorities in England and Wales, agreed with Government in their Strategic Steer, are:
· maintaining the network in satisfactory order · achieving shared Government/company longer term vision of moving towards greater self sufficiency through the growth of commercial business and other funding sources · delivering a range of additional public benefits that are not indivisible from maintaining the network.
2.3. The Government broadly favours the first as a priority, especially as this has a strong linkage with the delivery of many public policy priorities such as regeneration, sustainable landscapes and communities and public health, but recognises that a balance has to be struck with the other two, as all are clearly important.
2.4. The last decade has seen a widely acknowledged waterway 'renaissance' with canals being reinvented as agents of rural and inner city regeneration whilst offering some of the greenest recreational facilities available in the U.K. Indeed as the world faces up to the challenge of climate change we are now starting to see the increasing potential of our waterways to alleviate flooding, provide refuge for threatened wildlife, provide alternative transport and, thanks to the latest technology, even generate clean electricity.
2.5. British Waterways continues to refine its management approach, and continues to look at ways of securing requisite levels of ongoing infrastructure investment: Not least because work commissioned by British Waterways from the accounting firm KPMG (British Waterways Status options review - June 2008) confirmed that an extra £30 million is needed every year to allow the network to reach a 'steady state' of maintenance in which repairs are routine and the long-term decline of the network is prevented.
2.6. We believe the short-term improvement in the waterways' condition achieved to date is insufficient. The waterways still have great unfulfilled potential for delivering the diverse range of public benefits they are capable of generating. To unlock that potential requires a step change in both their resourcing and the extent to which that potential is, alongside their intrinsic worth, better recognised and valued by society at large.
2.7. During 2009 British Waterways will be holding a national debate with the public, stakeholders, staff and customers about the future of the country's waterways and their role in modern Britain.
2.8. The wider role of waterways will be emphasised in the forthcoming refresh of Government policy on inland waterways - Waterways for Tomorrow - which is due to be published in December 2009.
3. Waterways and Environmental Opportunities
3.1. British Waterways owns and manages 3,200km of waterways and towpaths and 92 reservoirs across the UK providing local and adaptable open space. 96% of our users are on the land not the water not least because our paths are flat, level, traffic free and close to where people live. Indeed half the population live within a short cycle ride, eight kilometres, of a waterway and a million people live within 100m of a waterway. The waterways' history means that they are also close to some of the harder to reach groups, 68% of the 10% most deprived areas in England include a waterway as do two thirds of the 50% most deprived districts.
3.2. Already each year the waterways welcome 11 million visitors making almost 300 million visits and spending nearly £1 billion with local businesses. The number of visits to waterways continues to grow year on year bucking the trend for decline elsewhere.
3.3. Opportunities for making the most of these key linear features of the landscape include, using them as a means of connecting communities with each other, connecting communities to the countryside, connecting communities to their cultural heritage, as transport and tourist routes in their own right or linking existing highways and byways, as ecological corridors facilitating the movement of flora and fauna or as a means of delivering safe and easy access to the outdoors locally, and using them to reduce energy consumption or generate renewable energy.
3.4. All of these rely heavily upon recognition of the potential by and delivery through partnerships.
3.5. Waterways can contribute to green jobs through conservation led construction retaining and developing skills, in encouraging various forms of sustainable transport and in the field of energy conservation and renewables. These areas are explored in more detail below.
3.6. The contribution waterways can make to citizenship, active participation and healthy lifestyles should not be underestimated. Volunteering is an area that has traditionally been important to this sector but it can also be used to develop practical and social skills helping people get back into work or to maintain contacts and health as they get older.
3.7. Investment in this green infrastructure also delivers long term benefits in terms of the quality of and sense of place it creates.
4. Sustainable Transport - towpaths
4.1. The expansion of the UK's canal network in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries played a key role in the industrial revolution, providing much-needed connectivity between sites of industrial activity, urban areas and ports. While the waterways still accommodate 22 million tonne kilometres of freight every year, by offering attractive and safe routes away from motorised traffic they also contribute to carbon reduction by connecting schools and employment areas to homes, encouraging people to travel by foot or cycle rather than by car.
4.2. BW estimates that around 70-75 million visits are made by people each year to waterway towpaths for transport, as opposed to recreational, reasons.
4.3. We know from our pedestrian counters that towpath improvements significantly increase their use. As not all towpath users will be making trips to the canal for recreation, towpath improvements have a direct impact on local modes of transport.[1] We also know that many car trips are short and around a third of car users would walk or cycle given safer alternatives[2].
4.4. With over 1,000 km of the British Waterways' network classified as urban the potential is huge. We estimate that improving just 1km of urban path could reduce CO2 emissions by around 100 tonnes a year. Improving the towpath, and access to it, would also have knock on benefits for health, well being and help to create the green infrastructure advocated in the government's World class Places Strategy.
4.5. In London recent rises in fuel prices and people's awareness of their carbon footprint have encouraged many commuters to get on their bikes and travel to work along the towpaths. Whilst the credit-crunch has forced budget conscious Londoner's to ditch their gym membership in favour of free to participate keep-fit activities, such as running and power walking. These factors have contributed to an increase in the number of people using their local waterway in the past five years, with over 34 million visits made to London's 100 miles of canals and rivers in 2007. We have been so successful that, in partnership with Transport for London, we are now employing London's first towpath ranger to help the many visitors to the capital's canals enjoy the waterways safely, and encourage users to think of each other as they travel.
4.6. Towpath reconstruction works are ideally suited to contribute to community participation, training and skills development. The works are also more labour intensive than many other construction projects which can be particularly important during times of recession as the construction industry feels the pinch. Such works help to retain skills, offer opportunities for training and provide the physical enhancement required to encourage investment when the recession ends.
4.7. An investment of £50 million would create at least 458 jobs, with not less than 88 suitable for trainees, save 41,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum, generate £7 million in annual public benefits and sustain 457 local leisure and tourism jobs.
4.8. By encouraging people to become more active, health benefits of up to £6 million per annum would be realised. In addition the environmental improvements to the green infrastructure would make a contribution to local place making and shaping.
4.9. British Waterways already works with a range of partners such as Local Authorities, Sustrans and Transport for London, to improve access to and the quality of the towpaths in urban, semi urban and rural areas.
4.10. However further encouragement is required, not least as is happening through emerging policy guidance, to ensure that both the private and public sectors fully appreciate and take advantage of the opportunities described above.
5. Sustainable transport - freight 5.1. BW waterways currently carry 1.7 million tonnes of freight each year. CO2 savings are modest but reductions in congestion and the cost of developing alternative infrastructure are equally important and may be more important in conurbations.
5.2. This is the case for the Olympics traffic described below and anecdotally is the case for the large indivisible loads taken up the River Trent to the new power station at Staythorpe.
5.3. However the costs to the navigation authority of accommodating freight traffic may not be recovered through the level of tolls that the traffic can bear. Nor may the barge operator make sufficient profit to replace their vessel when it reaches the end of its economic life.
5.4. In many ways London is an exemplar of the way in which freight on water could be encouraged. Taking freight off the roads is seen to be a benefit for the City as a whole. Accordingly responsibility for achieving a modal shift has been accepted by a broad partnership with Transport for London acting as lead funder. Partnership funding from, among others, Transport for London, Olympic Delivery Authority, Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, Department for Transport, London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, London Development Agency and the Environment Agency has seen the construction of the new Prescott Lock, dredging, and other infrastructure improvements in East London to allow and encourage more freight on water; not least to take material into and out of the Olympics construction site and developments associated with the Olympics legacy.
5.5. Freight studies, to identify the potential, and innovative projects such as the construction of the Powerday Waste and Recycling Plant at Willesden, which can be served by water, rail and road; the development of a prototype multi modal refuse collection vehicle; and most recently the joint funding of a Sustainable Transport Project Manager, all help water compete with road on a more equitable basis.
5.6. Barriers to increased freight traffic include the shortage of suitable traffic having destinations and sources close to water, the comparative ease of using road transport, the age and number of existing vessels, etc. The London Plan offers exemplar consideration of the potential of the "blue ribbon" network in the City which is then backed by a range of partners recognising the benefits to the City as a whole of increased traffic on water.
5.7. Solid encouragement will be required if the comparative ease and flexibility of road transport is to be overcome.
6. Renewables
6.1. In March 2009 British Waterways announced an agreement with The Small Hydro Company Ltd to generate 210,000 mega watt hours of renewable energy per annum by developing approximately 25 small-scale hydro electricity schemes generating enough power for around 40,000 homes, creating 150 construction jobs and saving an annual 110,000 tonnes of CO2. Backed by Climate Change Capital's Ventus Fund, the process of gaining consents for the first five hydro schemes alongside river weirs has begun.
6.2. The partnership with The Small Hydro Company follows British Waterways' announcement in October 2008, of an agreement with Partnerships for Renewables to bring forward wind turbines on canal-side land over the next five years with annual capacity to generate 219,000 mega watt hours of renewable energy, enough for around 45,000 homes. We believe there is the potential to install 50 to 60 turbines each of around 2.4MW which would save around 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.
6.3. In December 2008 British Waterways and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) unveiled an innovative energy saving scheme at the pharmaceutical giant's canal-side global headquarters in West London. This new green initiative will use canal water and heat exchange technology to provide a more sustainable alternative to traditional air conditioning - with a target of reducing GSK's head office carbon dioxide emissions by 920 tonnes per annum and lowering its energy bills.
6.4. This is on top of the existing 5MW installed on the waterways. We estimate that our waterways have the capacity to accommodate around 100MW of heating and cooling which would save around 100,000 tonnes of CO2 each year equivalent to removing 40,000 family cars from the roads.
6.5. British Waterways also supplies water to industrial users, often on a take and return basis which is unavailable from the mains. Some of this supply will be from winter water surpluses retained in our reservoirs for our operational and supply purposes which otherwise would have to come from groundwater or other sources. Currently British Waterways supplies almost 200,000 ML/annum reducing the call on potable supplies and the environmental costs of treatment.
6.6. As with freight by water, the latter options are novel and therefore require more thought and effort from the customer than if installing an off the shelf air conditioning unit or mains supply. Any encouragement that can be given to the private sector to make that choice easier would be welcomed.
7. Mitigation
7.1. Waterways can assist in a number of ways to mitigate the effects of climate change. They both contain and conserve valuable wetland habitats, including the waterway fringe, and connect habitat remnants or other valuable habitats to allow flora and fauna to migrate. They also provide opportunities for people to have access to natural areas in an urban environment; "the green bits between buildings".
7.2. Canals can also act in a number of different ways to relieve flooding:
§ Culverts act as throttles reducing downstream flooding § Canals and reservoirs intercept water that would otherwise have flowed downstream (from feeders, upstream embankments, etc.) § Canals' freeboard provides a reservoir to attenuate flood flows § Canals transfer water from one place to another, potentially from a higher risk area to a lower risk area.
7.3. The presence of a canal and its potential for attenuation may reduce flood levels and therefore increase adjacent land values. Restorations where channels have been reinstated demonstrate this effect.
7.4. Several towns and cities are now considering reintroducing water; not least to create a "wow" factor or to differentiate them from the competition.
7.5. Towns and cities tend to experience higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas due to the heat island effect. City centres may be up to 7oC higher than the surrounding countryside, and the larger the city the more intense is the heat island effect. Waterways introduce trees and vegetation to the urban environment which helps to reduce temperatures and by evapo-transpiration add humidity to what is frequently uncomfortably dry city air. The value of green open spaces within cities for ameliorating local climatic conditions is widely appreciated, and is frequently quoted as one of the beneficial functions of greenspace[3].
7.6. These benefits are increasingly feeding through into policy documents. It is important that waterways are mentioned specifically as too often the benefits other than navigation are overlooked.
8. Recommendations for action
· Inclusion of the role the infrastructure needed for sustainable transport, cycling and walking, can play within the broad package of measures to reduce carbon, create green jobs and encourage a change in people's mind set. · Encouragement for potential partners, including local authorities, the RDAs and the private sector to consider waterways as part of their green infrastructure, jobs and climate change packages. · Encouragement of investment to improve the quality of that resource. · Specific inclusion and mention of waterways within guidance and policy documents to ensure the opportunities presented by waterways over and above navigation are fully considered and exploited for the public benefit. · Encouragement for the private sector to consider ways in which partnerships with British Waterways and other similar bodies may help them reduce their carbon footprint, through use of the water for processes, cooling and heating, etc; towpaths for healthy and sustainable access by their employees; navigations for niche transport of waste, construction materials; etc. · Consideration of the longer term social and environmental benefits in any future support for the construction industry during the current recession. We would argue that investment in the waterways offers particularly good value.
May 2009 [1] BW Briefing note 5 [2] 27% of all car trips are commuter journeys DfTp 2009 Delivering a Sustainable Transport System: City and Regional Network Data book Annex 20 and DfTp 2007 Walking Personal Travel Factsheet [3] Dr David Goode (March 2006) Green Infrastructure - Report to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Increasing tree cover by 25% can reduce afternoon temperatures by 6 to 100C and simulations of a 30% vegetation cover reduced temperatures by as much as 60C. |