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| -Image by Copilot |
Almost everything humans have built over the last few centuries has been based on historical data about prevailing weather — river flows, rainfall, wind speeds and so on. Even in those rare instances where future conditions were anticipated and built into design, climate change is proceeding faster than expected and upgrades or rebuilds are already being forced on structures that are barely a generation old. London's Thames Barrier for example, opened in 1982, and Venice's MOSE barrier, decades in the making and only first activated in 2020, are both being deployed far more frequently than their designers anticipated and may need replacement within decades. Copenhagen's acclaimed flood prevention system, developed after devastating floods in 2011, is already being revised upward in response to updated projections.
In this post we will look at how climate change is affecting critical infrastructure across a range of sectors and how we can futureproof it — where possible. Part 1 will cover physical structures such as roads, bridges, railways, airports, ports and water supply. Part II will be about the systems that power and connect us — energy generation, transmission and communications.
Roads, Railways and Bridges
Roads, railways and bridges face threats from both heat and flooding — and the two reinforce each other. During the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave, roads buckled and cracked and workers had to spray Seattle's steel bridges with water from fire trucks to stop them buckling — diverting essential rescue services in the process.
In 2023, extreme heat caused New York City's Third Avenue Bridge to get stuck in the open position, while a steel railroad bridge connecting Iowa and South Dakota collapsed due to floodwaters — and when a 30-foot section of the Interstate 10 bridge on the California-Arizona border was washed away in 2022, it added an estimated $2.5 million per day to trucking costs. In California too, torrential rains in 2023 caused landslips and severe erosion which undermined its major artery, Highway One. Highways in Germany and China face similar challenges. In Austria alone, there were 1900 rail stoppages due to weather -related issues from storms, to snowfalls, fires, floods and mudslides and in the UK too, flash floods and landslides have halted train services and resulted in loss of life.
The key mechanism for bridge collapse during floods is "scour" — the erosion of sediment from under bridge piers and abutments by fast-flowing floodwaters, which the US Geological Survey estimates is responsible for around 60% of all bridge failures in the US.
Rail lines are particularly vulnerable to heat because steel expands — tracks laid to historical temperature tolerances buckle and kink in heat events that are now routine. UK rail tracks have a "stress-free temperature" of 27°C, but when air temperature reaches 30°C, rails in the sun can reach 50°C.
In July 2022, the entire east coast main line between Edinburgh and London was closed for hours while in the US, sun-caused kinks have resulted in over 2,100 train derailments in the past 40 years. Network Rail has acknowledged that large parts of the UK rail network depend on structures built between 1850 and 1920, and has earmarked £2.8 billion to adapt rail infrastructure to climate change between 2024 and 2029, confirming that Victorian-era infrastructure was never designed for the conditions now becoming routine.
Perhaps nothing illustrates how out -of -date our data is, as the sight of 10 of Japan's ultramodern Shinkansen trains being submerged by floodwater when Typhoon Hagibis brought 1000mm (39.37 inches) of rain in 24 hours and caused approximately $US 10 billion in damages.
In colder regions there is the additional problem of thawing permafrost. Roads, storage tanks and pipelines in Alaska are already affected with damage to roads and and buildings alone expected to cost between $37 and $51 billion by mid-century. Canada, Russia and around 30% of roads on the Tibetan Plateau are also affected.
What Can Be Done
Frequent inspection and updating of flood maps and plans in the light of new information and projections is the essential first step. Roads, railway lines, bridges, stations and subways in flood-prone areas will need to be elevated and drainage improved to prevent repeated damage and washouts. For how more detail on how cities are managing this, see the earlier posts How countries are Preparing For Climate Change - Floods, Storm Surges and the one on Extreme Weather,
Roads
Road surfaces themselves are being redesigned for the new reality. Engineers are brightening, cooling, draining and reimagining asphalt — coating streets with reflective slurry to reduce heat absorption, and allowing to let floodwater pass through rather than overwhelming drainage systems.
Performance-graded asphalt binders — which can be adjusted to account for higher temperatures — and polymer-modified binders that resist rutting and cracking under extreme heat are increasingly being specified for new and replacement road surfaces. Porous asphalt, allows water to pass through the surface into a specially designed sub-base
[Incidentally, new developments in asphalt and concrete -making such as using recycled materials, also have the potential to greatly reduce their carbon footprint, thereby working towards mitigation, not just adaptation].
Railways
Beyond painting rails white — which Network Rail confirms can reduce rail temperature by 5°C to 10°C — engineers are working on more fundamental solutions. Raising the stress-free temperature at which rails are installed would allow them to handle higher heat without buckling, though this creates a corresponding risk of rails shearing in cold winters. Some countries manage this tension by using solid concrete slab tracks, which can contain the higher forces created, though these cost approximately four times as much to install as standard ballasted track. Just having trains travelling more slowly helps to reduce the risk of trains derailing in high temperatures.
The UK's HS2 high-speed railway is being built with sensors on bridges and overhead wires to collect real-time weather data, feeding into digital twins of the network that can predict dangerous temperature thresholds and allow preventative action before services are disrupted.
Bridges
Bridges may need to be raised to allow for higher water levels. After suffering a $300 m loss in a 2013 flood, the state of Vermont is among the first in the USA to begin redesigning its bridges to withstand climate change, though this too comes at a cost of around 30 -40% more than conventional designs. Many bridges will need to be ‘hardened’- that is, be reinforced or at least have their piers protected with metal or other sheathing to prevent scouring. Expansion joints need to be checked and cleaned also.
What makes matters worse, is that many bridges were designed when traffic was lighter and temperatures and weather extremes were less pronounced. Of its 618, 456 bridges, a US study found that less than half could be classified as good. Much the same applied in the UK where 2023 inspections showed that around 3,211 were not up to standard. Around 86,000 of India's, 173,000 bridges date from colonial times -that is from the mid to late C19th which, unless meticulously maintained, increases the likelihood that any additional stress due to Climate Change, will make them more vulnerable to failure.
Fortunately today's engineers have a variety of new tools to monitor and inspect bridges such as sensors, cameras, strain gauges, even drones and cloud point lasers. Engineers use laser “point cloud” scanning (LiDAR) to create an ultra-detailed 3-D model of a bridge by measuring millions of points with laser pulses, allowing them to detect tiny movements, sagging, cracks, scour or structural changes far more quickly, safely and accurately than traditional manual inspections. It also allows rapid computer -aided comparison with earlier versions to detect changes over time.
Permafrost
For Permafrost, engineers have developed a range of adaptations including insulation, excavation of ice-rich ground, refrigeration using thermosyphons (passive heat exchangers), and designing structures such as pilings that can be adjusted as the ground surface changes over time. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline already uses heat pipes built into vertical supports to prevent sinking. T
he Qingzang railway in Tibet employs multiple methods to keep the ground cool in frost-susceptible areas. Many of these techniques suffer from limited effectiveness, high cost, high maintenance, or safety concerns — and the vast majority of roadways in sub-Arctic environments still lack adequate protection from thaw settlement. In some cases, relocation rather than adaptation may ultimately be the only viable long-term answer.
Airports
Airports suffer from many of the same problems as roads — tarmac buckles, drainage systems may be overwhelmed and terminals flood. But they have several additional and quite specific problems.
Heat
Large areas of asphalt and concrete which absorb heat mean that as in cities, ambient temperatures will be higher than their surroundings. As temperatures rise, air becomes less dense, reducing aircraft lift and requiring longer runway distances and reducing climb performance.
In Phoenix in 2017, American Airlines cancelled nearly 50 regional flights because temperatures of 49°C exceeded the Bombardier CRJ aircraft's maximum operating limit of 118°F, although after months of deliberation, that limit has since been raised to 123.8°F.
Other options such as rescheduling flights for cooler parts of the day during summer or extreme heat events, could be implemented immediately and where lift is reduced, weight restrictions can be imposed. While this means fewer passengers, reduced luggage allowances or less cargo, it remains a relatively low -cost operational adjustment that is likely to become increasingly routine.
To counter the effect of excessive heat on its airport Sofia (Bulgaria), has resurfaced its airport runways and pavements in heat - resistant materials.
Flooding and Storm Surges
Secondly, a surprising number of the world's busiest airports are built on low -lying and or reclaimed land at or near sea level, which makes then vulnerable to rising sea - levels and storm surges, which is now of concern to the insurance industry given the economic impact of airport closures and the increase in rainfall and severe storms. What happened at Japan's Kansai International Airport which serves around 30 million passengers a year, is instructive.
It is built on an artificial island off the coast. In September 2018, it was struck by typhoon Jebi, the strongest in 25 years, breaching its seawall and flooding terminal buildings and a runway, stranding thousands of passengers and staff, as well as costing at least a dozen people their lives. It took ten days before the terminal could reopen and and another week before repairs were complete. Making matters worse, was the fact that the disaster response centre and an electrical substation were located in the basement which was also flooded, resulting in widespread blackouts. Brazil's Salgado Filho International Airport was also closed for over five months in 2024 after flooding due to excess rainfall.
When the US looked at its own airports recently as part of its National Climate Assessment, it found that 13 of its 47 busiest airports had at least one runway within 12 feet of current sea levels. San Francisco International Airport, built on reclaimed coastal land, is countering storm surges not only with 8 miles of steel -capped concrete seawall, but through the restoration of tidal marshlands, which can reduce storm surges by up to 20 cms. JFK Airport in New York has raised all the buildings in its new terminal by 1 metre.
Brisbane Airport is also on reclaimed coastal land, It recently constructed its new runway 1.5 metres above the minimum regulatory requirements and with better drainage channels. It also built a new seawall to reduce tidal flooding. Singapore's Changi Airport has resurfaced its runways to provide better drainage and is building a new terminal at a higher level to protect against flooding as sea levels rise.
Changing Wind Patterns
Runways are also oriented according to historical prevailing wind directions — and changing wind patterns mean some airports are increasingly operating in crosswind conditions which their runways weren't designed for, a problem that is extraordinarily expensive to fix on constrained urban sites. Changing winds are also affecting in -air operations.
Ground-based LiDAR is increasingly used at airports to detect microbursts and wind shear on approach and departure — hazards responsible for several fatal crashes before reliable detection was possible. Remember our earlier discussion of the weakening, wavier jet stream because of that change in temperature gradients, that same instability is increasingly responsible for turbulence at cruising altitude.
Clear Air Turbulence as it is known, invisible and undetectable to radar, has increased by more than 50% over the North Atlantic since 1979 and is projected to double or treble on some routes in coming decades, should you be wondering why you now have to keep your seatbelt fastened even when the sign goes off.
What can be done
The Japanese Aerospace Agency JAXA, has developed an airborne LiDAR system that can detect clear air turbulence up to 17.5 km ahead of the aircraft — roughly 70 seconds warning at cruising speed — enough time to alert passengers and prepare the cabin.
There's also a crowd-sourcing approach — aircraft equipped with sensors can share turbulence data directly with other nearby aircraft in real time, allowing following planes to avoid or prepare for known trouble spots.
Heavier Rainfall
Intense Rainfall and Rainbombs are also making air travel much more hazardous. See the previous post on Extreme Weather for more on this. While large airports have general weather monitoring, these do not usually pick up the kind of intense localised rainfall events that can reduce visibility to near zero within minutes. To counter this, the Japanese (again!) have developed a compact radar system which can detect low-altitude rain and snow clouds that conventional large-scale radar systems miss, since those primarily monitor higher altitudes across wide areas.
Increased frequency of lightning strikes poses a further risk to airport terminals, air traffic control towers, communication towers, navigation equipment and fuel stores. In 2018, the UK's Stansted Airport was shut down by a lightning strike on its fuelling system, causing hundreds of flights to be delayed or cancelled. In 2023, lightning struck the control tower at the Baltimore -Washington International Airport, rendering it unusable for a time. Though experts think there will be fewer severe storms in the long run as the planet warms, those which do develop are likely to be more intense, with a net increase in lightning strikes. The response lies primarily in improved forecasting and detection technology to minimise risk rather than trying to eliminate it.
Adapting to New Challenges
With extreme weather already disrupting airport operations worldwide, operational resilience is now vitally important. Simulation and systems-based planning is increasingly being used to help airports and pilots to anticipate risks and plan for all manner of worst case scenarios.
Ports
Port Houston is one of the busiest ports in the USA. When Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, it was not the hurricane itself which caused major damage because Texas, no stranger to hurricanes, already had excellent disaster preparedness plans in place. Oil companies at the Port for example, had already installed back up power, relocated communications systems and elevated control rooms and pump stations beforehand. It was the unexpected 50 inches of rain which accompanied Hurricane Harvey – breaking all previous records, which resulted in the flooding of three main terminals and access roads which brought operations to a standstill.
During and immediately after the hurricane - the fourth that year, all ports along the Texas coastline were closed, along with warehouses, refineries and petrochemical plants located there which reduced oil and gas production by 25% and oil refining by 50%. Although the Port itself reopened within a week to ten days, they remained closed for over a month while roads were cleared and silted access channels were dredged. Freight transport was similarly disrupted and it took another 3 -5 years before reconstruction was complete, making it at an estimated (US 125 billion, the costliest storm in US history after Hurricane Katrina. Had the earlier preparations not been made, the disruption it would have lasted longer and cost more.
What Can Be Done
The range of adaptations already underway is considerable.
Port owners are upgrading breakwaters, floodgates, seawalls, quays and berths —
physically raising facilities, waterproofing assets, and building flood and
heat resilience. Immingham, the UK's largest port by tonnage, has already done this by erecting outer lock gates to protect against storm surges. The UK's Climate Change Act requires that ports make voluntary climate adaptation reports.
A study of 150 documented port adaptations found that the most
commonly implemented measures are operational improvements — including changes
in working practices and hours, and flood protection measures such as
heightening quay walls, upgrading dock gates and installing pumps.
The Port of Miami and the Port of New York and New Jersey are already implementing similar adaptation measures in response to rising seas, while Rotterdam — Europe's largest port — is constructing storm barriers and flood gates as part of a city-wide flood defence system.
The Port of San Diego is using environment friendly ECOncrete to develop shoreline infrastructure which not only protects against storm surges but provides habitat for marine species. Nature-based solutions such as this are increasingly being used along with hard infrastructure.
One less obvious but significant problem is that rising sea levels will reduce air draft — the clearance under bridges — causing problems not just for ports themselves but for the interdependent infrastructure of rail, pipelines and road bridges that serve them. In planning upgrades, providing alternative access routes and relocating important facilities such as warehouses and operational centres to higher ground.
According to the Brussels -based World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure, (PIANIC), simply having good planning and effective early warning systems, can reduce economic losses from weather related disasters by 30%. The European Climate Resilience Port Infrastructure Project (CLARION), based in the Netherlands, recommends better forecasting of extreme weather, corrosion monitoring for port infrastructure and flood impact control.
Dams
In recent years there have been a growing number of catastrophic dam failures. Although out -of -date specifications, ageing plant and poor maintenance bear some of the blame, there is no denying either that in many cases, excessive rainfall has been the straw that broke the camel's back.Too Much Water
Since 2000, there have been 630 dam failures in the USA due to extreme rainfall. For example, Michigan's Edenville and Sanford Dams were destroyed by a 1-in-200-year rainstorm in 2020, causing $250 million in damage. However, analysis of 552 US dam failures found that they weren't generally caused by a single extreme event, but by a combination of heavy rainfall over several days, followed by one extreme event and that the probability of these compound rainfall periods has increased across much of the country. It also found that the US has more than 90,000 ageing dams still in service.
In Derna, (Libya) in September 2023, Storm Daniel dropped up to 400 millimetres of rain in 24 hours, collapsing two embankment dams and killing over 11,000 people. Similar failures have also occurred in Kenya (2024), the Sudan (2024) and in Norway (2023).
What Can Be Done
Several modelling tools are available for risk assessment regarding dams under different climate scenarios, and yes the risks get progressively worse, the higher we allow temperatures to get. Structural measures include raising dam crests, enhancing spillway capacity, creating wetlands for overflow and reinforcing embankments. Where space prevents building longer conventional spillways, labyrinth and piano-key spillways can significantly increase discharge capacity within the same footprint. Having a series of cascading dams allows flood waters to be trapped for later use, without jeopardising downstream communities. It also reduces sediment loads within dams. More powerful and more frequent rainfall means more erosion and more sediment in dams. This reduces storage capacity and increases flood risks so removing sediment, or better still trapping it with vegetation or other means before it gets there, will help to prevent overtopping, flooding and failure.
Non-structural measures include real-time monitoring, early warning
systems and emergency action plans.
Closer to home, Hydro Tasmania completed spillway gate upgrades at its
Meadowbank Dam in September 2024 (Renewable
Energy World) — a reminder that Tasmania's dam challenges cut both ways. In
some cases, decommissioning a dam that can no longer be safely maintained is
increasingly recognised as preferable to waiting for catastrophic failure.
Too Little Water
The world's dams were designed around historical rainfall and river flow patterns that are no longer reliable. Coupled with higher temperatures which lead to more evaporation, many dams are experiencing water levels well below those anticipated when they were built.
In 2018, Cape Town came within days of becoming the first major city in the world to run out of municipal water — what Bloomberg described as "the largest drought-induced municipal water failure in modern history" — a crisis made five to six times more likely by climate change according to Stanford and NOAA researchers. While Cape Town narrowly avoided catastrophe, other cities such as Mexico City - home to 23 million people, came close to its own Day Zero in 2024 as did Chennai in 2019, despite being one of the world's rainiest cities.
In the American West, the Colorado River — which supplies water to roughly 40 million people across seven states, including the cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles — has been in a 22-year megadrought, with Lake Mead falling in July 2022 to its lowest level since the reservoir was first filled in the 1930s. Water managers have declared the first-ever federal shortage on the system, with one official warning: "We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating."
Closer to home, some 90 Australian towns in New South Wales and Queensland were also at risk of running out of water in 2019 and again in 2020, with some having to truck water in over long distances and others being told that they may have to evacuate.
What Can Be Done
Cape Town's near-catastrophe and subsequent recovery offers the most comprehensive real-world case study of water supply adaptation in practice. Aggressive public engagement, real-time water tracking through its Water Watch dashboard, leak reduction and a diversification of supply — incorporating groundwater, reuse and desalination as permanent pillars rather than last resorts — allowed Cape Town to cut per capita water use by over 50%, even after the crisis has passed.
Demand management is the fastest and cheapest lever — Cape Town was able to reduce demand rapidly through a combination of restrictions, tariff hikes and pressure management on an unprecedented scale. From what I can gather, there was also considerable social pressure.
Aquifer storage and recovery — storing surplus winter rainfall underground for use in dry seasons — is among the most promising and least discussed tools, with Cape Town investing R4.7 billion to bring 105 million litres of groundwater per day into its drinking supply by 2036. Greater self – provision should not be overlooked either.
Other measures include raising dam walls, removing sediment, lowering water intake elevation and diversifying between surface water, groundwater and desalination help to reduce the risk of any single supply failing. Shading water surfaces, whether through established vegetation or infrastructure such as solar panels, directly reduces evaporation losses — an underused tool in hot climates where evaporation can account for a significant proportion of reservoir losses.
One interesting possibility is the use of plastic covers such as this one, being trialled on three dams in Western Australia. I haven't explored this further and have no idea of the cost, but it is said to have reduced evaporation by 73% and saved 1.6 million litres of drinking water. Another type is targeting farm dams and additionally promises to reduce not only evaporation, but algal growth. It also reduces emissions from holding ponds and the like.
I have no personal experience with these and wondered if white or light-coloured covers have been considered because they would repel more heat and might help to inhibit bacterial growth. If anyone knows, I'd love to hear. I also worry about how such covers will perform in more extreme weather - more storms, more cyclones and even just the kinds of gusty winds we have in Tasmania. I also hope that they can at least be recycled at the end of their life.
In Cape Town it was also considered important to remove invasive weeds which were drawing water from the reservoir, but this may not hold everywhere. In Australia for example, some farmers have restored dry creeks beds by planting anything and everything, including weeds, - even exotic willows which councils have been grubbing out for years, simply to keep moisture in the soil, to prevent further drying, loss of topsoil and erosion.
Where new dams are being considered, the siting decision is critical — deep, narrow valleys lose far less water to evaporation than broad shallow ones. An interesting snippet on a discussion about water use in mining whose other claims I disagree with, mentioned that some companies were covering their water
Stormwater
Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens Stormwater Harvesting System captures runoff from 67 hectares of surrounding catchment, removes gross pollutants through physical traps, strips contaminants through sedimentation and biofiltration wetlands, then disinfects with UV light before being used for parks and gardens. More ambitiously, the City of Orange in NSW implemented Australia's first scheme capable of supplying 25% of its drinking water by harvesting and treating urban stormwater — developed during the Millennium Drought when dam levels fell to 23% capacity.
Treated stormwater distributed through a third-pipe network could serve other non-potable uses such as firefighting, industrial processes, car washing, toilet flushing or industrial cooling as it does in parts of South Korea, with large surge tanks in the basement of apartment and office buildings. This not only helps to reduce flash flooding during storms but ensures availability of water for emergencies.
While the harnessing of periodic floodwaters may seem like an attractive alternative in some regions, this should be done cautiously in Australia because its very arid landscape depends on those floods to maintain the living things which do survive in it and are extremely adapted to those cycles. I am thinking here of the savanna ecosystems in Australia's north, and also of species such as the lungfish which bury themselves for years in the mud of drying lakes, but then emerge as the lakes fill again.
A reasonable compromise may be to capture only the water that is in excess of historic rainfalls and would thus keep things in balance. Leaving more water in the river system would also help to prevent the kind of fish kills we have seen in the Murray Darling. Enforcement will be difficult. We already have three -way tussles over water between farmers, towns and miners - the environment barely gets a look in, and we can expect those problems to get worse and not just in Australia. It is true that inland Australia has access to ground water via the Great Artesian Basin - this is finite "fossil water" - not renewable on any human timescale, and not suitable for drinking due to its mineral content. It is also a long way from the places that need it most.
Wastewater
Most of the world’s water treatment plants were also designed for conditions which no longer apply. Water treatment plants face threats from flooding which can cause raw or partially treated sewage to be discharged into water supplies or catchments as happened in Jackson, Mississippi, where historic flooding left more than 150,000 people without safe drinking water for weeks. When Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, it flooded 800 waste water treatment plants and 13 Superfund sites, spreading sewage and toxic waste across flooded areas creating an immense health hazard.
Drought also concentrates pollutants and reduces source water availability, while warming and stagnating water bodies, promote toxic algal blooms that conventional treatment processes were never designed to handle — a 2014 bloom in Lake Erie left 400,000 people in Toledo without usable water for two days and cost $4 million in additional treatment chemicals — adding to costs as water temperatures rise. Lastly, rising seas are pushing saltwater into coastal freshwater sources, corroding pipes and producing toxic disinfection by-products. On Hilton Head Island alone, six of twelve original drinking water wells have already been abandoned.
What Can Be Done
Where existing treatment plants are overwhelmed by flooding or drought, the options range from engineering solutions to nature-based ones — and increasingly the most effective approaches combine both. Enlarging or relocating vulnerable plants is the most obvious response but also the most expensive, and in some cases the right answer is decentralisation — smaller distributed systems that serve local areas and are less catastrophically vulnerable than a single large facility.
Among the simplest and cheapest adaptive measures is raising bunds - that is, the earthworks around existing plants, many of which were built well before current flood level projections
Constructed wetlands are among the most promising nature-based pre -treatment tools. Wastewater treatment is already transitioning from centralised, energy-intensive facilities toward decentralised eco-treatment systems such wetlands, which use natural biological processes to filter and break down contaminants before water reaches conventional treatment infrastructure. They are lower cost, less energy intensive and provide habitat value as a bonus.
Biochar — essentially high-grade charcoal produced from organic waste — is emerging as a powerful filtration medium that works particularly well in combination with constructed wetlands. Biochar's highly porous structure makes it an excellent material for filtering and adsorbing impurities, and it can be adapted for use in different types of water filtration — from large-scale municipal treatment plants to smaller decentralised systems. Pilot studies using biochar derived from agricultural and forestry waste in vertical flow wetland systems have shown effective removal of both inorganic pollutants and organic pathogens from municipal wastewater. An additional benefit is that biochar sequesters carbon during its production, giving it climate mitigation value beyond its filtration role.
Upgrading stormwater overflow infrastructure — the pipes and channels that discharge directly to waterways when treatment plants are overwhelmed, is less glamorous but addresses the most immediate public health risk.The UK which has an immense problem with discharge of raw effluent into rivers -due as much to ageing infrastructure as too much water, since it happens in dry seasons too, with 600,000 incidents recorded in a single year, has recently opened its Tideway Tunnel - a 25 km Super Sewer beneath the City of London, which will work like a huge surge tank to prevent sewerage entering the Thames during heavy rains.
For communities without the resources of the City of London, the creation of wetlands can offer a more affordable alternative and provide stormwater buffering, natural filtration and public green space at the same time, for a fraction of the cost.
Saltwater intrusion into coastal treatment systems can be managed through pressure zoning - that is, maintaining higher pressure inside the outflow pipe than the surroundings, using upgraded pipe materials resistant to corrosion, and in the longer term, relocating intake points away from tidal influence.
Thanks to Copilot for the illustration, to Claude for being an excellent research assistant and some very lively discussions and ChatGPT and Ecosia when it runs out.
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