09 / LANDSCAPE
SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES
In light of the recent flooding across the country, landscape cost estimating specialist, Colm Kenny explores the cost implications and opportunities of retrofitting sustainable urban drainage measures
T
he large scale flooding in many parts of the country during the past few months has devastated the lives of the people affected and caused an estimated €1,000,000 worth of damage to property. This flooding is becoming more regular as the wet weather of recent winters, and indeed summers, has witnessed a rise in the number of flooding instances which have occurred. While it is only large scale flooding of houses and farmyards that make the national news, localised flooding of people's gardens and driveways are not worthy of national media coverage yet they occur on a weekly basis during the winter months. Government
34
departments, local authorities and the wider construction industry as a whole have begun to realise the need to deal with surface water at source instead of dumping it into the existing drainage network which in most parts of the country is inadequate and unable to deal with the prolonged periods of wet weather. The landscape industry will have an important future role to play in solving this issue. There is a general public consensus that our climate is changing with the result that surface water and its disposal will only become a bigger issue as time moves on. The development of land that typically would not have been built on due to its low
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticulture.ie / Spring 2016
