When it comes to the development of new residential buildings, the environment is taken into great consideration during the planning stages. This is to ensure that the construction process and final building(s) won’t have an adverse impact on the surrounding landscape. One such consideration that must be made is in relation to pollution, specifically the pollution of local waterways.
This has become a prevalent issue in coastal areas especially, whereby the waste water generated by these buildings can pollute and degrade the delicate coastal habitat nearby which they’re built. As such, Natural England has provided new guidance for sites impacting protected waterways, which includes principles on nutrient neutrality.
Read on below as we discuss what this means and how it can be achieved to minimise the impact these new residential developments have on the coastal landscape.
What is Nitrate Neutrality in Landscape Development?
Nitrate neutrality, or nutrient neutrality as it’s commonly referred to (which regards both nitrate and phosphate), is a means of ensuring that a development project doesn’t add to existing nutrient burdens within local waterways, meaning there will be no net increase in nutrients as a result of the project.
The aim of this is to avoid the environmental impact development projects have on designated sites, especially in coastal areas, rather than mitigating the impacts once they have occurred. In order for a new accommodation development to be permitted in locations that are in close proximity to protected harbours and coastal areas, they must demonstrate nutrient neutrality.
How to Demonstrate Nitrate Neutrality
In order to demonstrate that your proposed project will do no harm to any nearby protected sites, then you must use bespoke catchment calculators to assess the site’s current nutrient status and the likely impact of your new development. From this, you and any relevant competent authorities are able to identify the level of mitigation required to cancel out the additional nutrient pollution expected from your project.
Offsetting the increase in nitrate pollution can be done in a number of ways. Firstly, you can purchase nutrient credits from the Natural England-led Nutrient Mitigation Scheme, whereby your obligations will be discharged and handled by Defra and DLUHC, who have begun carrying out numerous mitigation projects, such as creating wetlands to intercept nitrate and other harmful nutrients before they reach affected waterways.
There are also other private mitigation schemes that offer a similar credit system, or alternatively you may be able to design your own on-site mitigation where land is available.
Here at Lizard Landscape Design and Ecology, we can provide nitrate budget guidance in accordance with Natural England guidance for sites impacting upon the Solent. We also have links with local mitigation schemes that offer mitigation credits, whilst our ecological experts can help design on-site mitigation.
For more information on how we can help and to learn more about our other ecological services, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.