Forum topic: Arnos Park river restoration project

The Issue

We are lucky enough to live locally to Arnos Park and enjoy the serenity and peace the park offers, we want to see this park thrive and that’s why we are in support of the river restoration project.

The project promises to return the river - Pymmes Brook to a natural flow, meandering through the middle of Arnos Park, taking the river out of its concrete walls where the river sits ecologically dead and instead enhancing biodiversity, preventing local flooding and creating new walking routes to enjoy.

A natural river is about 30% fast-moving riffles and 70% slower-moving, deeper pools – something Feargal Sharkey told us when he walked the Pymmes Brook back in 2018. The natural faster flow of river will encourage invertebrate life, crucial to the food chain, supplying food for birds and aquatic life, but they can’t survive in dank, concrete-clad, slow-moving water where sediments are constantly being deposited.

Proposed wetland areas will improve the river even more, as the plants filter out pollutants completely naturally. Wetlands also hold on to volumes of water in heavy rain, which helps to reduce flooding both locally and, vitally, downstream in Edmonton where there is a flood risk to people’s homes.

We believe that any scheme delivered by Enfield’s watercourses team will be high quality. The team has won awards for its work on the Salmons Brook and Enfield Chase Restoration Project plus wetlands projects at Wilbury Way, Firs Farm and Albany Park, among others. These parks are now flourishing with wildlife.

Sign the petition showing your support for the river restoration project and the countless benefits it will bring.

 

Interesting about the comments about history. Almost no river in UK runs in its original course – they have all been diverted, straightened, turned into ditches and worse. The river would have been more towards the centre of the park - - the actual river valley/natural flood plain, best place for a river to run, really. And comments about history are spurious – I believe when the park was part of a private estate it was landscaped by one of the C17th landscape designers - - Humphrey Repton I believe. So, most landscapes are different depending on which era of history you roll them back to. Originally, the brook was called ‘Marsh Meadow Mead’, which tells you that it was a brook flowing through meadowland and marshes. Lovely image!