Memorandum from British Waterways
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; and
— 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.[9]
We also know that many car trips are short and around a third
of car users would walk or cycle given safer alternatives.[10]
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 7°C 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.[11]
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
9 BW Briefing note 5 Back
10
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 Back
11
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 10°C
and simulations of a 30% vegetation cover reduced temperatures
by as much as 6°C. Back
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