Environmental experts appointed to find natural solutions to Cork floods

Major flooding in Midleton, Cork in October last year. Picture: Eddie O’Hare

Two experts have been commissioned by Cork County Council to come up with ‘nature-based solutions’ to aid flood prevention projects planned in East Cork.

Professor Mary Bourke from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Paul Quinn, a senior research scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, have been appointed to look at adopting measures in the region similar to successful projects that have been undertaken in Britain.

Prof Bourke is a geomorphologist with expertise in extreme environments.

She undertook her PhD at the Australian National University investigating catastrophic floods in the central Australian deserts, for which she received the university prize for outstanding postgraduate research in Earth Sciences.

She moved to the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, to study floods in Martian landscapes and now leads the Earth and Planetary Surface Process Group in the department of geography at TCD.

Mr Quinn previously worked as a senior lecturer in catchment hydrology at the School of Engineering at Newcastle University and is widely regarded as the foremost expert in Britain on nature-based solutions to flooding.

Mr Quinn has worked extensively on ‘soft engineering approaches’ for flood prevention projects throughout Britain and Ireland.

Social Democrats councillor Liam Quaide, who recently introduced the two experts to the public at an event in Midleton, said nature-based solutions are most effective with smaller, frequent floods than with the type of event that caused devastation in Midleton last October.

However, they can significantly add to the overall flood resilience of a catchment area.

Mr Quaide has welcomed the experts’ appointment as he had been urging the council for several months to carry out such a project, especially after October’s Storm Babet, which caused severe damage to hundreds of properties across the East Cork region.

Normally such projects identify farmlands that can be deliberately flooded to protect properties.

“These projects involve engagement between landowners, local communities, and a range of agencies, including those overseeing forestry and river management. Provided landowner consent is obtained, these projects do not require planning approval and therefore results can be seen in much shorter time periods than with standard flood relief schemes,” Mr Quaide said.

He said Government urgently needs to formulate a national policy on flood management whereby farmers would be paid a premium by the State to, for example, allow some of their fields to flood and also construct dams or wetlands or plant native trees and hedgerows which will hold water.