Can Land Drainage Offer an Environmental Benefit?

We are becoming more and more aware about how our actions impact the wider environment and often, messing with Mother Nature can cause unforeseen consequences and other issues later down the line. Land drainage, however, although at first sight it may be seen as a bad environmental practice, it can be very sustainable and even offer a potential benefit.

It needs to be emphasised that the actual process of land drainage isn’t  particularly environmentally friendly – large drainage machines guzzle fuel, they must be transported to the site by a HGV and the task will need the help of two more large tractors – eating away at more fuel. The materials used are also generally made of non-recycled products, but there is an increasing effort to transform this practice.

There are a couple of arguments however to argue that, in the long-term, an environmental benefit can be seen from a land drainage system. First of all they will last a long time, which means that their initial cost to the environment is offset as they can last for generations and secondly they increase productivity, offering benefits in yield giving a maximum output from an input.

If well-designed and well-installed, a land drainage system is truly sustainable and pipes laid decades ago can continue to work twenty four hours a day, seven days a week using only the power of gravity to trickle water away from problematic areas. And what is more the land drainage system will need little to no maintenance.

Land drainage is a tried and trusted method to improve the yield of a field – and that is why it has been used for centuries. Poorly drained fields do nothing but harm to the yield of a crop, limiting the nutrients available to plants meaning that crops grow more slowly and are prone to disease. Although it might sound odd, land drainage can even help in the summer months of drought because if plants have been able to develop good strong roots in the rainier months, they can dive deeper to find moisture.

The best environmental benefit of land drainage is the increase of yield in agriculture. Balanced over the lifetime of a drain, this can cancel out the initial environmental costs.