A Natural Approach
I am not in the Par St Blazey Catchment but am in an catchment that feeds into St Austell Bay.
The issue, during extreme weather events, water flows into a woodland via a pipe and through a bank spreading across a field (my field) on its journey before flowing down and impacting barns in the valley bottom (my barns).
Lack of co-operation with adjacent woodand landowner required an in field solution, the objective being to guide the flow, slow it down and provide some attenuation to reduce flow rate and enable perculation into surrounding environment.
Solution Create a simple trench and secondary bank within the field, conveing water through a energy reduction scrape in the top field corner, slow the flow down the incline (using existing vegetation) before collecting water in an attenuation feature ( earth bunding with energy reduction pit and earth baffles).
The ditch created at the top of the field will be fenced and we are considering sowing basket willow essentially turning the bank and linear depression into a long term low maintenance natural water conveyance facility.
Photographs, taken in August 2020 show the low cost project which was delivered within a budget of £500.
A recent extreme weather event allowed some fine tuning however the system is broadly functional and we will monitor its performance over the coming months.
I think the project demonstrates a NFM/Working with Natural Process project that's about working within boundaries using the assets available. Undertaking the work it felt like a mindset, one that looked at a number of potential interventions, there are further adjustments we could consider on our land and further down the hill should they be required. Building to an iterative approach that follows a principle of multiple interventions where a combination of upstream measures contribute to reducing flood risk in a particular area.
Sorry can't seem to upload photos I have several of the construction phase and its performance in the first extreme weather event, let me know if you are interested and I'll send them.