{"id":633267,"date":"2026-06-11T15:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/633267\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T15:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:22:08","slug":"plan-to-make-liverpool-spongier-to-help-stop-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/633267\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan to make Liverpool &#8216;spongier&#8217; to help stop flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Around 85% of sewers in Merseyside are combined, meaning rainwater and wastewater flow through the same pipes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Over time we&#8217;ve lost a lot of the green and natural spaces in and around the city as we&#8217;ve urbanised, and we&#8217;ve paved over our gardens to accommodate more cars and we&#8217;ve built over old rivers that used to exist,&#8221; Phillips said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Making our towns and cities more spongy means capturing the rainwater.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;By adding the sponge back into our towns and cities, we not only manage rainwater in a much better way, where it falls, we are also able to deliver so many more wider environmental benefits in terms of nature, and bringing nature back to towns and cities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Blundell Street and the Baltic area in Liverpool have already had gardens installed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Peter Allen, assistant headteacher at St Vincent de Paul Catholic Primary School said before the gardens were introduced the playground would regularly be flooded after heavy rainfall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Before this project, because of the surface water, I&#8217;d have to wade out up to my ankles and clear the grids,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Now the children can get out, this is just exactly what we needed.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 85% of sewers in Merseyside are combined, meaning rainwater and wastewater flow through the same pipes. &#8220;Over&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-633267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}