The political reaction to this year’s flooding was fairly predictable. Irrespective of part affiliation, the common refrain was that “someone should do…em.. something about it”. Indeed.
Clearly, it is not possible or desirable to ban all building work because of a danger of flooding. But I wonder just how much thought went into the planning and rezoning of land for development and housing. In Galway, Oranmore is rapidly expanding into wetlands – similarly, on the Headford Road, the expanse of bog and swamp that absorbs each winter’s rain is now being developed.
Nationally, the amount of land converted from fields to tarmac and concrete is huge. In the last decade, about 700,000 new houses were built. Let’s assume only half of those were built on greenfield sites, and let’s assume that the average size of each site is about 300 square metres. That’s 105,000,000 square metres of land that sends water flowing to the nearest gutter, drain or sewer rather than absorbe it. Our motorway programme adds to the problem too. To take just one example, the N6 motorway section between Athlone and Ballinalsoe is about 20km in length (currently under construction). Excluding the verge, the road will be 22 metres across, which doesn’t sound like much. Except when you multiply that by 20, 000, you get an area of tarmac thats 440,000 square metres in size.
It’s not just industrial development that’s adding to the problem. For years, the government and Irish farming organizations have encouraged farmers to take advantage of the European Union forestry grants. No farmer uses good land for planting trees – instead, many of the forestry have been planted on boggy land – land previously capable of absorbing an awful lot of water.
Now, we’re not going to stop building roads – or houses – and we’re probably not going to stop planting trees either (though the grant aid is a lot less lucrative now). It might be nice to think that we’ll give a bit more thought to where we’ll build – or plant. But I doubt it.