Loss of green space and wildlife

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 489.

Noise

Water

In South-East England, climate change and household growth is pushing available services to their very limits. A particular problem is the increase of household demand for water. Attention focuses on water company losses and failures to meet targets for reducing leakage. However, much of the leakage problem lies between the company mains and the household pipes. Householders are responsible for leaks on their properties and often delay taking action to address these problems, which leads to a high wastage of water. Thames Water, for example, believe that the amount of water they lose due to leakage is higher than the average because householders in their area are particularly reluctant to pay the costs incurred with leakages. Responsibility for leaks on householders' properties needs to be shared with water companies, enabling earlier action.

Very high users are a problem. These show up on water company monitoring studies as extreme events. If there is insufficient resource for investigating the extreme, the cause is ascribed to instrument failure or the like. Investigation often reveals some real extreme behaviour (e.g. the householder who runs a fish farm on their property). In such situations, water companies need the power to install meters compulsorily.

All new dwellings must have water meters and the issue is whether this should be extended to all dwellings. This could be done as a condition of selling a house, so that once legislation has been introduced, purchasers (or vendors) know that house sale must mean metering is fitted. There would need to be means to ensure high-demand/low ability to pay users are not disadvantaged (e.g. large but poor families). Stepped tariffs (lifelines) are used in the USA so that the first set of units of demand is free, but then marginal costs increase with demand. We must ensure that poor people are not disadvantaged and public health is not jeopardised.

Garden culture will probably have to change through introduction of more drought resilient plants (but avoiding the hazard of introducing more invasive species that out-compete native UK wildlife), less broadcast watering, more delivery to plants individually (watering cans) and more use of rain capture (roof fed water butts etc.). Incentives and help need to be developed for companies and households to move to a new water use culture.

If domestic users are rapidly switched to meters then careful thought about the right arrangements needed to provide financing of 'extreme event' works (storm drainage, droughts) and other social goods, because the revenue streams to water companies will decline if prices limit consumption. New technologies will need to be developed for dealing with concentrated sewerage.

This is becoming a big issue. There is a steep rise in complaints from traffic and domestic noise, as well as commercial outlets such as pubs and clubs. Densification of urban areas means that people are in greater proximity and noise becomes more of a problem. This can have very deleterious effects on quality of life and even on sleep and mental health. There is a need to specify standards of noise insulation, both inside buildings and in relation to the outside world. It is possible to achieve high standards, as modern hotels show. The aim should be to emulate these in domestic construction.

Land erosion and littering in coastal and suburban areas

Urban areas do have significant areas of greenspace in the UK, but these are being eroded through development (including loss of school playing fields). Public green spaces do not receive much investment for maintenance and many areas are in poor condition. Poverty of green spaces is another factor contributing to low environmental quality of a local area, which encourages suburbanization and greater travel. Similarly, urban areas are highly impoverished in terms of wildlife, due to habitat loss to development and pollution, though suburban biodiversity may be in better shape. This suburban biodiversity and its possible loss is a factor that is often overlooked in discussions on densification.

6. What measures can be taken if it comes to the polluted land? Read an article about ‘recycling' land resources in Great Britain and discuss the issues offered below.

Does the word ‘greenfield' remind you of anything? Do you think that it is accidentally spelt as one word?