Attenuation basins and tree planting - Sarah’s story

Following flooding on an unprecedented scale that ravaged parts of the Calder Valley including Hebden Bridge during Christmas 2015 Sarah knew she wanted to help. The town's narrow valleys are surrounded by steep hillsides carved out by rivers, making the area and its surrounding communities particularly vulnerable to flooding. Sarah had heard about the NFM landowner grant scheme from the South Pennine Farmers Group. The creation of attenuation ponds on Sarah's land would allow safe and contained storage for excess rain and stormwater. This removes some of the potential flooding risks in the valley below as excess water can drain in a controlled way.

The main objective of Sarah’s attention basins is to store and control the flow of excess drainage, surface water and stormwater but the future woodland will enhance both biodiversity and amenity value, even if this will take a long time to establish. Sarah’s project also included planting over 600 trees and 400m of new hedging. The scheme was also designed to help create corridor habitats for wildlife in the nearby nature reserve situated below the farm to reach and extend further up the valley, creating wildlife corridors where previously there were no trees. On completion, Sarah added "I’d like to do more of the NFM schemes,
especially in local areas of land where I know that water flows can be a problem for neighbouring properties. I’d hate to see people’s houses flood, there have been some near misses, as well as previous cases of properties flooding. Now that the attenuation basins have grassed over, I think they look sculptural and enhance the interest of the landscape."