CLEANING THE MEDWAY

RIVER MEDWAY & WETLANDS RECOVERY PROJECT

PROJECT OVERVIEW

SCALE: 100 km watercourse and 30,177 ha water basin

LOCATION: Middle & Lower Medway Catchment and tributaries (River Len, Leybourne, Ditton and Loose Streams)

CORRIDOR ROLE: Provides water quality improvements for the River Medway and estuaries, large-scale water storage and attenuation, translating upstream infiltration into flood-risk reduction for urban areas downstream.

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CORE INTERVENTIONS

  • Wetland restoration and creation

  • Floodplain reconnection

  • Wet grassland management

  • Riparian and wet woodland planting and restoration

  • Riparian buffers and reduced chemical applications to farmland

  • Run-off attenuation

  • Fish-barrier removal

ECOSYSTEMS SERVICES & BENEFITS

  • Natural flood management and flood-water storage

  • Nutrient interception and water quality improvement

  • Wetland ecosystem resilience

  • Carbon sequestration

  • Recovery of threatened habitats and species

INVESTMENT OUTCOMES

  • Risk management: increased resilience to flooding

  • Generates BNG units

  • Carbon removal

  • Water quality enhancement and supply resilience:

    • Water infrastructure savings

    • Voluntary water stewardship credits

  • Environmental improvement for public benefit

NATURAL CAPITAL ESTIMATES

  • floodplain meadows & wetlands

    Floodplain meadows and wet grassland are among the corridor's richest and rarest habitats, storing flood water, locking up carbon and supporting species found almost nowhere else - yet most of Kent's water bodies fall short of good ecological status under the Water Framework Directive.

  • water vole

    The water vole is Britain's fastest-declining mammal, dependent on healthy, vegetated riverbanks of exactly the kind this project restores.

  • european eel

    The European eel is critically endangered, its numbers down by over 90% in a generation; each one migrates thousands of miles from the Sargasso Sea to rivers like the Medway, a journey removing fish barriers helps reopen.

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