Greater Cambridge Local Plan Preferred Options
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Greater Cambridge Local Plan Preferred Options
Biodiversity and green spaces
Representation ID: 58085
Received: 12/12/2021
Respondent: Fulbourn Forum for community action
The assessment in the Greater Cambridge Chalk Streams Project ignores the opportunity to enhance the streams and water courses flowing from the springs at Fulbourn and Wilbraham. Naturally flowing, year-round water would have a significant effect in increasing biodiversity, and the resultant re-wetting of some areas would make a contribution to carbon sequestration as well. As a fen edge village, Fulbourn's fen character has been significantly reduced due to the abstraction from the Fleam Dyke pumping station and elsewhere. This can be restored and nature will quickly return given the right conditions.
Fulbourn Forum for community action supports the proposals to revitalise the chalk stream network and the enhancement of the eastern fens of which the springs and water courses emanating from Fulbourn and Wilbraham are a part. These springs and their streams are the catchment area that feeds into Quy Water that flows through Lode and the water mill at Anglesey Abbey, then on to the Cam via Bottisham Lode.
The Greater Cambridge Chalk Stream Project does not appreciate the huge loss of water to this catchment resulting from over-abstraction of water from the chalk aquifer. The two springs just east of the Fulbourn Fen Nature Reserve will only run if there is above average rainfall in winter. The wetting and drying of the water courses is detrimental to the establishment of a healthy ecosystem. If reliable, year-round flows were re-instated (by a reduction in abstraction) the nature reserve and adjoining areas would quickly recover with an increase in biodiversity. To help with the climate emergency, it is essential that these areas are not lost. As recently as the 1980s, kingfishers and water voles were to be found in the Nature Reserve. But no longer. The current water augmentation is not the answer - it is a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. At Fulbourn the augmentation does not feed into the springs, leaving streams dry. It just provides a small amount of water to help wet the East Fen Pasture, the location of the wild orchids within the SSSI.
