Case study:Valley Brook Restoration Project

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Location: 53° 5' 45.33" N, 2° 27' 32.08" W

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Project overview

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Status	Complete
Project web site	http://https://naturalcourse.co.uk/uploads/2021/11/Valley-Brook-case-study.pdf
Themes	Land use management - agriculture, Water quality
Country	England
Main contact forename	Carrie
Main contact surname	Wright
Main contact user ID
Contact organisation	Environment Agency
Contact organisation web site
Partner organisations	Natural England, The Rivers Trust, United Utilities, greater manchester combined authority
Parent multi-site project
This is a parent project encompassing the following projects	No

Valley Brook Crewe

Project summary

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One of the barriers catchment partnerships face is understanding what action needs to be taken to improve rivers to good status. River Basin Management Plans provide information on why rivers are failing to achieve good and generic actions, but are not specific around how to can close the ‘gap to good’.

Valley Brook in Crewe is a small urban watercourse. It is failing water quality standards because of upstream inputs of nutrients, mainly from sewage works and agriculture, and because it has been constrained and altered as Crewe has developed. United Utilities have committed to upstream improvements at Audley sewage treatment works which will lead to significant improvements in water quality before 2024.

Next Steps Feasibility and design work has been commenced on the river restoration and partners are developing a business case. Valley Brook partnership members have started discussions with land owners to look at delivering more mitigation measures, along with identifying suitable funding streams.

Monitoring surveys and results

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Project The aim of this project was to test out the effectiveness of carrying out more detailed environmental planning on one waterbody and understand if this would drive action and improvements. This involved three stages of work: Stage 1 - Intelligence report Stage 2 - Detailed environmental planning Stage 3 - Production of the plan

Stage 1: Intelligence report The intelligence report brings all of the information e know about the brook into one place. This allowed us to identify the significant issues on the brook whilst maintaining an overview. Two main issues were identified for Valley Brook:

• Restoring a more natural flow and function to the river (mitigation measures)
• Reducing the input of phosphate from upstream catchments

Lessons learnt

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Learning point: It’s easy to get lost in the detail at this stage of the process. Concentrate on the major issues – what’s going to make the biggest improvements. Stage 2: Detailed environmental planning Phosphates Water quality modelling using SAGIS had already been carried out, so we knew which sectors were responsible for the phosphate and how much phosphate needs to be removed to achieve good status. The main source of phosphate was sewage treatment works and agriculture. The sewage treatment works is due for improvement before 2024 Mitigation measures These are actions we can take to improve the ecology of a heavily modified river. Although we had previously identified mitigation measures, we asked the Environment Agency biodiversity and geomorphologist to review those measures and they produced a river restoration report. Stage 3: Production of the plan The outcome of the planning, including all of the actions needed to close the gap to good were recorded in the Valley Brook catchment action plan. Outcomes The catchment planning led to the development of the Valley Brook Partnership, which involved local authorities, Mersey Rivers Trust, Cheshire Wildlife Trust, Groundwork and many more.The Environment Agency and Cheshire East Council and Crewe Town Council successfully bid for £2.9m of central government funding (though the town fund, and an additional £250k of Water Environment Investment Fund) recognising the importance of putting the river at the heart of the economic regeneration of Crewe. The funding will restore more natural function to a section of Valley Brook and create a green transport route along Valley Brook corridor. Funding bids have been submitted to work with farmers in the upstream catchment Learning point: The catchment planning for Valley Brook has created a clear narrative around action which has led to partners being able to work together to deliver outcomes and a long term commitment to improve Valley Brook

Learning point: SAGIS provides information on the source of phosphate and the percentage reductions required. Farmscoper was used to model what actions farmers need to take to achieve good status. All farms in the upstream catchments, including Engelsea Brook and the rural section of Valley Brook were included. Phosphate from agriculture needs to reduce by 88% in the upstream catchments. This will require significant land use change ,as well as wide spread uptake of other mitigation measures

Learning point: Farmscoper is a decision support tool that can be used to assess diffuse agricultural pollutant loads on a farm and quantify the impacts of farm mitigation methods on these pollutants. You can download it and guidance documents from the ADAS website

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Catchment and subcatchment Select a catchment/subcatchment Edit the catchment and subcatchment details (affects all case studies in this subcatchment) Catchment River basin district South West River basin East Devon Subcatchment River name River Weaver Area category 10 - 100 km² Area (km2) Maximum altitude category 200 - 500 m Maximum altitude (m) 297297 m <br />0.297 km <br />29,700 cm <br /> Dominant geology Calcareous Ecoregion Great Britain Dominant land cover Arable and Horticulture Waterbody ID GB108045009110 Site Edit site Name WFD water body codes WFD (national) typology WFD water body name Pre-project morphology Reference morphology Desired post project morphology Heavily modified water body National/international site designation Local/regional site designations Protected species present Invasive species present Species of interest Dominant hydrology Dominant substrate River corridor land use Average bankfull channel width category Average bankfull channel width (m) Average bankfull channel depth category Average bankfull channel depth (m) Mean discharge category Mean annual discharge (m3/s) Average channel gradient category Average channel gradient Average unit stream power (W/m2) Project background Edit project background Reach length directly affected (m) Project started Works started Works completed Project completed Total cost category Total cost (k€) Benefit to cost ratio Funding sources Cost for project phases Phase cost category cost exact (k€) Lead organisation Contact forename Contact surname Investigation and design Stakeholder engagement and communication Works and works supervision Post-project management and maintenance Monitoring Reasons for river restoration Edit reasons for restoration Mitigation of a pressure Hydromorphology Biology Physico-chemical Other reasons for the project Measures Edit Measures Structural measures Bank/bed modifications Floodplain / River corridor Planform / Channel pattern Other Non-structural measures Management interventions Social measures (incl. engagement) Other Monitoring Hydromorphological quality elements Edit Hydromorphological quality elements Element When monitored Type of monitoring Control site used Result Before measures After measures Qualitative Quantitative Biological quality elements Edit biological quality elements Element When monitored Type of monitoring Control site used Result Before measures After measures Qualitative Quantitative Physico-chemical quality elements Edit Physico-chemical quality elements Element When monitored Type of monitoring Control site used Result Before measures After measures Qualitative Quantitative Any other monitoring, e.g. social, economic Edit Other responses Element When monitored Type of monitoring Control site used Result Before measures After measures Qualitative Quantitative Monitoring documents Upload monitoring documents Additional documents and videos Upload additional documents Additional links and references Edit links and references Link Description Supplementary Information Edit Supplementary Information