Work is due to start next year on park landscaping designed to clean the run-off from Lewes Road to stop it polluting Brighton and Hove’s drinking water.
The Aquifer Partnership (TAP) has been given £1.79 million by National Highways to develop the Wild Park Rainscape and is due to submit a planning application next month.
The rainscape, or sustainable drainage system (SuDS), will clean surface water from a section of the A270 as a pollution prevention project.
The design uses a series of ponds, grassy channels (swales) and shallow basins to manage surface water, reduce flood risk and improve water quality in the Brighton chalk block.
TAP partnership manager Susie Howells said: “All our drinking water in Brighton and Hove comes from the aquifer beneath our feet.
“It’s really important that we do more to keep it clean. It can get polluted in many ways.
“This project captures dirty surface water as it comes off the road, slows it down and uses natural processes to clean the water before it’s allowed to sink down into the aquifer.”
The project has also been given $25,000 by Unesco for research into how well the scheme stops pollution of Brighton’s chalk aquifer, before and after construction.
Ms Howells said: “The UNESCO funding adds a small amount of funding, enough to cover a two-year part-time masters student to follow the development of the project and do baseline water quality hydrological and geological sampling and to follow it through its first year post-construction.
“We should be able to use this methodology to share with others what we’ve learned.”
The research, to be conducted at Brighton University, will provide data on the effectiveness of the rainscape in reducing pollution to encourage greater take-up of similar schemes locally.
As part of the wider research project, the TAP team will work with local schools to develop learning resources around the water cycle and groundwater aquifer.
Rain garden play areas have already been created in local schools, such as Moulsecoomb Primary School.
Leaflet drops and community feedback sessions at Moulsecoomb Hall, the Bevy and New Larchwood, in Coldean, earlier this year resulted in plans to plant 88 trees to replace seven being felled to make way for the scheme.
TAP, started in 2016, is a collaboration between Brighton and Hove City Council, the Environment Agency, the South Downs National Park Authority and Southern Water.
The council is managing the project on behalf of the partnership.
The project is due for completion in September next year.
All we need now is to stop the football parking and then it maybe a place people would want to come and enjoy.
That is the A270, not the A27
You can’t expect a local paper, reporting on local matters to get the name of a local road right. That would never do.
More of the cost of motorism being palmed off onto the taxpayer, this should be paid for by a citywide congestion charge.
Car Delenda Est
If the various ‘Road Improvement schemes’ actually did as the name suggests the problem wouldn’t be as bad, lets not forget also we have no park and ride due to the council scared in case local people actually used it.
Talk of congestion charge came about the last time these muppets were in charge, most of the congestion is caused by their flawed schemes.
Great another £1.8m on not helping those in need, I can understand the need for this drainage system because wild park is prone to floods, but this is another “improvement” that Brighton council have decided to do now at a time where homelessness is at an all-time high, and families are going hungry to keep kids happy, first £2m on the old Shoreham road cycle lane, then £9.5m on renovating the seafront and no most of that is not to repair the promenade, and now another £1.8m on wild park, yet both governmental parties that run Brighton have pledged less than £200,000 on homelessness and mental health combined.
From the article: “The Aquifer Partnership (TAP) has been given £1.79 million by National Highways to develop Wild Park Rainscape and is set to submit a planning application next month.”
Do you suppose National Highways’d be OK with the council appropriating that money for homelessness support, or do you think they’d sue? What about the other members of TAP?
£1.79 million? I doubt that would even cover the damage and theft in hotel properties during ‘everybody in.’ We could do with a FoI to find out exactly how much.