This drain, drain, faster faster is a question I've been keen to get to the bottom off as I live in an area covered by upcoming River Thames Scheme to help prevent flooding. As I'm doing a rewilding course I wanted to find out how much natural flood management techniques they were using as nature's solution is to generally hold water as long as possible in the landscape to slow down peak flow, as peak flow is generally what causes the worst flooding events. This also has knock on benefits helping mitigate pollution and soil erosion etc.
I've been to two consultations and am still none the wiser, though I've another consultation to go to.
Whether this is tree/vegetation cover or beavers (despite being in the middle of surburban sprawl, Ealing have secured funding for beavers as a potentially cheaper solution than hard infrastructure for flood mitigation and a significant amount of the beaver costs were the fencing to keep them in despite England having some wild beavers).
Similarly I've seen the Pennine Way in the South Pennines turn into a fast flowing stream during one period of wet weather due to the inability of the land to hold all the water and houses there get flooded as well.
Obviously the clash here is between the human and natural ways of doing things, building static houses on floodplains doesn't fit with more chaotic natural solutions in a dynamicly changing landscape with increasingly erratic weather patterns...