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What Is South West Water Doing To Protect The Natural Environment?

Water management consultants - H2O Building Services

 

Although many of the UK’s water suppliers have been coming under fire in recent years for water mismanagement and causing damage to the environment, one of the biggest culprits in this regard is South West Water, which delivers supplies to 1.8 million customers in Devon, Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset.

 

In April 2023, the company was handed down a record fine of over £2.1 million after admitting to 13 counts of unauthorised sewage discharges and breaches of its environmental permits, relating to seven incidents across two counties dating back to 2016.

 

And the firm was also recently rated as one of the worst water companies in England for water pollution, receiving two stars out of four in the Environment Agency’s annual environmental performance assessment report for 2022.

 

Although admittedly an improvement on its previous one star rating, the Agency said at the time that South West Water’s pollution rates were unacceptable, with the company coming bottom in the national performance tables, alongside Anglian Water, Thames Water, Wessex Water and Southern Water, according to a BBC report.

 

Although South West Water asserted that it had delivered big improvements on pollution and, indeed, total incidents in its catchment area were down by around 33 per cent in 12 months, it seems that little has changed over the last two years.

 

In March this year, it was reported that parent company The Pennon Group believes it will not hit its goal of achieving a four-star environmental performance rating in 2024, putting the blame on current operating conditions.

Instead, it expects that it will achieve a two-star rating for the second consecutive year, which means improvements are still very much required.

 

Pennon explained that six out of seven of its metrics are now tracking positively towards four stars, but headline performances for storm overflow use and wastewater pollution have been affected by significant increases in wastewater flows.

 

Positive efforts

 

It seems that there has been some investment on the part of South West Water to improve its environmental record, most recently renewing its commitment to the Catchment Management Declaration, which promotes collaborative work across different sectors to improve water resource management.

 

The declaration, launched in 2018, aims to tackle the challenges of water stresses through better catchment management by bringing together governments and non-government organisations.

 

South West Water’s catchment management programme Upstream Thinking has won multiple awards, applying natural solutions to the problem of agriculture’s impact on water quality and biodiversity, while supporting farmers and the rural economy by delivering resilience to climate change over the long term.

 

As a result of this scheme, more than 111,000 hectares of land has been improved, involving over 1,100 farms since 2020.

 

The Upstream Thinking initiative also involves peatland restoration across Exmoor, Dartmoor, Bodmin and Penwith, working in close collaboration with South West Peatland Partnership.

 

Once restored, these peatlands serve as natural sponges, slowing water flow to reduce flooding during periods of heavy rainfall. This should work to improve water quality by reducing the amount of manure and chemicals being washed off the land into local waterways. Since 2020, restoration has begun on 1,630 hectares of peatland.

 

Elsewhere, desalination is taking centre stage, with £125 million being invested to increase water resources in Cornwall and Devon by next year to break the drought cycle and build water resilience into the local system. This includes plans to deliver a new desalination plant in Par, aiming to produce up to 20 million litres of drinking water each day.

 

To bridge the gap until this site is ready, a smaller plant will be delivered later in 2024 using existing infrastructure to avoid damaging the marine environment, with the plant able to produce between 2.5 million and five million litres of potable water daily when required.

 

South West Water’s drought and resilience director David Harris said: “Our current reservoir levels may look healthy following a wet winter and the interventions we and our customers have made, but the impact of climate change tells us we need to be more resilient to drought.

 

“Regulators are encouraging water companies to develop supplies that are resilient to the impacts of climate change, and desalination is one important step in a wider programme of work we are delivering to ensure resilient supplies across our region in the face of a changing climate.”

 

And, naturally, storm overflow use is also being addressed, a key feature of the utility company’s WaterFit programme of work and investment to protect the rivers, seas and overall environment of the south-west. The aim here is to monitor 100 per cent of the region’s combined sewer overflows, bringing spills down to 20 incidents per facility per year.

 

It will certainly be interesting to see how well South West Water performs in the future and if these plans bear fruit as the combined pressures of climate change and population growth continue to bite.

 

If you, as a business, would like to find out how you can play your part in reducing pressure on the network, whether you’re in the south-west or elsewhere in the UK, get in touch with the H2o Building Services team today.

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