46 How should we engage with local communities?

A key component of Drainage and Wastewater Management Planning is engaging with stakeholders including the local community. There is a similar requirement for stormwater in the requirements for Surface Water Management Plans. But what would real engagement look like?

The picture at the top of the blog is Arnstein’s ladder of public participation, which shows the different depths of engagement that we can aspire to. In the UK water sector we rarely get beyond the middle block of informing, consulting and placating.

A few years ago I was involved with the production of the CIRIA guidance on “Communication and engagement in local flood risk management”, which built on the Environment Agency guide on “Working with others”. Sadly the EA guide no longer seems to be officially available, but I found a copy here.

There is a good summary of the principles on the Local Government Association website.

“By engaging others early before you make decisions, you can help them understand why decisions are made, manage their expectations about what they can influence as well as potentially building their ownership for the issue and any subsequent action they might need to take.  If instead you don’t involve others early and take a ‘decide, announce, defend’ approach (where you make the decision alone and then communicate that decision to stakeholders), you risk opposition and having to invest significant resources in engaging others later in the process when you will have already lost their trust.”

As we saw in an earlier episode of the blog, water companies are starting from a position of having already lost trust; especially on wastewater. So how do they use engagement to recover and how far should we go? 

A while ago a colleague sent me a copy of the planning guidance for sustainable drainage systems for Auckland, New Zealand. It included a chapter on “Designing to reflect Mana Whenua values”, that is the values of the indigenous people. I found myself replacing “Mana Whenua” with “local communities” to see how it compared to the UK approach. I also found that I needed to replace some culturally specific terms in the Auckland guide with the definitions provided in the footnotes so that it made sense in a UK context. To reflect the current concern of UK communities with wastewater discharges as well as stormwater management, I read “stormwater” as “drainage and wastewater”.

Please don’t accuse me of cultural appropriation, my intention is to understand, to respect and to learn from other cultures. 

Because of the strong cultural attachment of the indigenous communities to the environment around them the Auckland guide went further than the UK guidance. So what can we learn from it?

I have extracted a list of values, design principles, objectives and associated activities from the guide (shown in italics) and then added comments on how I think we match up. Of course, if we are really engaging with the local community then the community can add, delete or change any of these components to represent their specific values and concerns.

Community values

Local community values should be intrinsic to the design, construction and management of drainage and wastewater systems, including:

• The right to exercise authority and self-determination within one’s own realm.
• The exercise of guardianship by the local community of an area in relation to natural and physical resources; and includes the ethic of stewardship.
• The desire of a community to make their community welcoming to visitors.
• The immutable connection between people and their environments.
• Unity, cohesion and collaboration within and between communities.
• A relationship through shared experiences and working together that provides people with a sense of belonging
• Recognition and use of local community knowledge and understanding.

In the UK, we might pay lip service to some of these values in our planning and design of drainage and wastewater systems, but I don’t think that we really accept any of this.

Principles

Principle 1

The key objective of engagement is to enhance the protection, reinstatement, development and articulation of local community cultural heritage and cultural landscapes enabling all of us to connect to and deepen our understanding of the local environment. 

I think that is more ambitious than the vision statement of any UK water company or local authority. I particularly like the ambition to deepen everyone’s understanding of the local environment. That involves not just physical actions but also explanation and exploration to learn about the environment. What can we do to achieve that?

Principle 2

Local communities have a responsibility of ensuring that the historical and cultural aspects of the local environment are maintained for future generations. This includes the sense of place that exists everywhere. Including culturally significant water: important either environmentally (SSSI or habitat) or aesthetically (tourism, recreation, scenery).

In the UK we tend to assume that local communities have delegated or even abrogated this responsibility to government, local authorities, and regulators. Local communities are not asked about this responsibility until they start protesting.

The importance of sense of place and culture is interesting. Perhaps less so for drainage and wastewater than for other aspects of urban planning because it is often hidden below ground, but sustainable drainage using blue green infrastructure can certainly help to preserve or establish a sense of place.

Principle 3

A key concern to the local community is the effect on the local environment caused by impact on a stream, river, estuary, catchment or harbour. This can be due to pollutants entering waterways, loss of riparian margins and the loss of native habitat to support native flora and fauna. This can also affect the ability to carry out traditional activities including angling, swimming and other outdoor exercise. 

The concern about the impact of pollutants on watercourses would be common in the UK, but again this brings in the sense of place of riparian margins, habitat and ecology that are not given prominence in considering our impact on the water environment.

The reference to carrying out traditional activities such as swimming is interesting, as In the UK some of the required environmental improvements are due to the growing popularity of swimming in areas where it has not been traditional in recent times. Establishing a new tradition could be a good thing, but we need time to prepare the environment for it.

Objectives and actions

Objective 1

The local community is recognised and respected and is enabled to determine how it is to be involved. For example:

• Provision for the local community to take responsibility for selecting the planting of features Include opportunities for foraging for food or community gardens.
• Preserve and enhance opportunities for angling by the local community.
• Allow for and encourage the local community to inspect and monitor environmental controls during and after construction.
• Opportunities for the local community to be involved in on-going maintenance contracts and be point of contact for corrective maintenance.

We are starting to see two strands of this in the UK.

• For green infrastructure sustainable drainage schemes we are seeing the inclusion of community gardens and the communities being encouraged to be involved in their use and maintenance; but these are few and far between so far.
• We are also seeing the increase of citizen science to monitor the health of our waterways and hold those responsible to account for any degradation. 

Both of these are to be welcomed and should be encouraged.

Objective 2

The health of the local environmental is protected, maintained and/or enhanced. For example:

• Avoid discharge of contaminated water into marine and freshwater receiving environments.
• Encourage the use of organic fertilisers and herbicides
• Encourage the use of hand weeding and hand maintenance.
• Provide fish passages and wildlife corridors.

I like the holistic nature of this objective. Yes, it puts a responsibility on the water companies to not discharge contaminated water, but it also puts a responsibility on agriculture and even on householders to avoid other forms of contamination that could impact the water environment.

Objective 3

The history of the community and archaeological history and cultural landscapes and landmarks of the area is secured and valued. For example:

• Archaeological sites are commonly located near watercourses and riparian / coastal margins. Extra care should be taken when working near these zones.
• Developers should have protocols for dealing with accidental discovery of archaeological or cultural sites and artefacts and an up to date register of representatives from the local community to be consulted.
• Ongoing liaison with the local community during any construction or excavation works.

I think that in the UK this objective is generally achieved on large projects with formal archaeological investigations and ongoing liaison. I think that it may be less common on small projects or on maintenance works. We could do more to engage with local communities. How challenging is it to do a leaflet drop to households affected by even small short term work?

Objective 4

Local community memories and stories are captured and expressed creatively and appropriately...For example:

• Enlisting the local community to provide local memories and stories prior to works can provide workers with an understanding of the rich cultural history and significance of the area.
• Local memories and stories can be incorporated into signage around drainage and wastewater management measures and waterways.

We are starting to see some use of signboards to explain the water environment, including on sustainable urban drainage systems using blue-green infrastructure. These might also include something of the history of the area before construction. But, I don’t think that we should stop at recording what was there before the current community existed, but should include how the community and its infrastructure was built.

• On social media last week I saw a photograph of an old village water pump with, in the window behind it, a poster with a photograph of it in use when it was the only village water supply and the story of the man using it in the photograph. We need more of this. But why not also photographs and explanation of what replaced it and still provides a reliable supply but is hidden out of sight.
• The sewer outside my house was built by unemployed miners from south Wales in the 1930’s depression. I know about this from an elderly neighbour who lived here as a child at the time. I doubt if many others of my neighbours know about this and there is nothing to record their work and the challenges that they faced. But this is important in setting the context for the development of the community.

If we better explained the work that we do to provide drainage and wastewater services maybe we would get more recognition of the achievements and less focus on the failures. Maybe in this digital age this should be as a layer of information on google maps showing where the wastewater infrastructure is, how it was built and how it works.

Conclusions

In the UK we have a long way to go to match the awareness of communities that New Zealand is striving to achieve. But there are many benefits if we can do it.