Maddy, Julia and Jamie attended the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival (https://www.innovationfestival.org/) at the Newcastle Racecourse in July 2024. Once we had worked out where to park, how to get into the venue and where the best pancakes were, we settled in.
We joined the Ouseburn ‘sprint’ – a couple of days intense listening and discussion about the Ouseburn, a tributary of the Tyne. This burn, through Jesmond Dene and out to Great Park, has attracted a great deal of energy (and money) and is perhaps seen as the landmark catchment-approach project in the North East of England. The Reece Foundation has donated funds to develop the Ouseburn Way (https://www.theouseburnway.co.uk/) and the Tyne Rivers Trust has focussed energy to improving the quality of the water (https://www.tyneriverstrust.org/creating-a-better-ouseburn-for-everyone-to-enjoy/).
There were a wide range of speakers – housing developers, the Environment Agency, Northumbria Water, university researchers, Xylem amongst others.
There was much discussion about the CaSTCo approach (https://theriverstrust.org/our-work/our-projects/castco-catchment-systems-thinking-cooperative) and/or a catchment masterplan. This is a framework for bringing stakeholders together and sharing data and information to support evidence-based integrated catchment management. In our mind, this is where CRAG is heading (without perhaps the formal structure).
Many interesting initiatives were discussed, including:
- Water Rangers – formal or informal volunteers who walk the river and report problems and improvements
- SUDS (Stormwater Drainage Systems) – used to manage stormwater flows in housing developments, allowing water to soak into the soil naturally rather than flowing into the sewage system
- Storyboards – Use of ArcGIS mapping software to describe changes (both good and bad) as a result of interactions with the river – the original ‘story of the river’!
After two days and lots of coffee we left for home feeling that CRAG was on the right track and that we now had many more ideas and contacts who could help us improve the Coquet.
CRAG 