Will Shaw explores opportunities for storing more water within catchments
This opinion piece was first published in the March 2026 edition of The Water Report as ‘Catchment where you can’.
Climate change is bringing wetter winters and drier summers, putting pressure on water management systems to retain more water within the catchment. Binnies Client Services Manager William Shaw shares how the business simultaneously considers cost, benefits, funding and stakeholder needs, supporting a changing approach to water management.
There is growing recognition that integrated planning will be key to successful water management, but funding models and processes are rarely aligned to consider multi-criteria decision analysis. While it takes both effort and time to understand the shared challenges and opportunities and to develop evidence for decisions, the scale of challenge makes this essential.
For example, climate change adaptation models for the Severn catchment suggest retention of another 100,000,000 m3 of water (more than 50 O2-Arenas-worth) will be needed by 2030 and an additional 60,000,000m3 by 2080. No single structure or intervention can capture this. In the Severn, as in most catchments, multiple approaches will be needed that include both nature-based solutions and hard engineering.
The ‘Christmas tree’ model
Breaking it down into successive steps of technical opportunities and funding means we can build business cases and targeted opportunities that can be funded, delivered and deployed. We call this the ‘Christmas tree’ model.
If businesses use this model in their approach to the challenge of storing more water during winter, technical options become clearer. Geospatial information tools and catchment modelling can show that formalised floodwater storage areas, peatland restoration to hold water or nature-based solutions using large woody structures and creating natural wetlands are technical options. This can quickly help us in situations where we need to avoid formalised flood storage areas sitting on high quality lowland agricultural land. We can examine the relative efficacy of options like this versus other interventions upstream, such as natural flood management.
Co-benefit opportunity
Tools that take this approach help us to assess the opportunity for co-benefits. What might be beneficial for farm owners, for example? Might nature-based solutions that store water further upstream provide more water for grazing animals during the drier summers while also mitigating against flooding downstream during high rainfall events? If that is the case, can these be funded? Historically, flood risk management funding has been allocated based on the number of households protected, and this wouldn’t fit that criteria, so other funding streams must be considered.
Multi-criteria decision analysis within these tools can help us to explore small changes in preference. This helps us to investigate how specific measures might, for example, offer biodiversity benefits. This may help us know where there are opportunities for biodiversity net gain and, perhaps, associated credits to be created from the measures, the sales of which could fund the work. Alternatively, could downstream businesses, such as butchers, supermarkets or abattoirs, benefit from more water on this pasture? Perhaps lower water costs for the farm owner would mean cheaper meat, or perhaps the increased water allows for more animals on the pasture and thus a greater supply. If so, could downstream businesses contribute to the funding of these pools?
This approach has led to very innovative interventions in the past. We have seen dairy farms given funding by international food and drinks companies to help reduce agricultural run-off. This benefited the dairy farms’ production, and as a result, the supply to the food and drinks company, but the reduced run-off also reduced the pressure on water treatment works downstream, negating the need for costly new works. And of course, the reduced run-off benefited the environment. In the Spey catchment we have seen whisky producers fund works that would improve flood resilience and biodiversity, while also ensuring a more stable supply of grain and water to the distilleries.
Severn Valley Scheme
Binnies is supporting this as part of the Severn Valley Water Management Scheme, working with a variety of partners within the River Severn Partnership. Opportunities for crisp manufacturers and potato producers to work together have been highlighted and are being explored for mutual benefits through improved water management within the catchment.
Key to the success of this model is that as we progress to the tip of the ‘Christmas tree’, it is important to be realistic. In making business cases, hard evidence will be needed to show that an intervention will deliver. This is why in the Severn, there are demonstrator projects currently in progress to show proof of what interventions will deliver, such as the Rea Brook project, planting cross-slope woodland and creating new wetland areas incorporating leaky dams, or the Oswestry de-paving project.
As climate change impacts are set to increase pressure further on our water management systems, we need to be exploring these multi-criteria interventions in every catchment. By breaking it down into steps of what can be technically delivered and funded, and then creating the business case and incorporating the funding opportunities, a complex challenge can be simplified into actionable steps.
About Will Shaw
Will Shaw is Binnies Client Services Manager for the Flood, Coast and Environment sector.
He is a Flood Risk Consultant and Civil Engineer who has over 25 years’ experience of project delivery.
Will is also currently seconded to the Environment Agency leading a portfolio of strategic projects on the River Severn.