Members of the UK water sector
met at the end of June at the Royal Geographical Society in London for a one
day national water policy conference, “Future Water 2013”, which aimed to
address a number of water related policy issues surrounding building a more
resilient water sector for the future.
The morning session started with
a panel debate chaired by John Vidal (Environment Editor, The Guardian) and
panel members Anne McIntosh MP (Chair of HoC EFRA Select Committee), Ian Barker
(Head of Water, Land and Biodiversity, Environment Agency), Tony Smith (Chief
Executive, Consumer Council for Water) and Alan Sutherland (Chief Executive,
Water Commission for Scotland). The discussion aimed to explore how the water
sector can remain resilient financially, technologically and environmentally in
the future and how customers can benefit from new reforms.
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| Ian Barker |
Ian Barker highlighted the range of problems
which the water sector faces in relation to the water supply and the
environment. 2012 saw the UK face ~90 days in drought conditions, followed
later by 72 days in flood. The country
experienced 11 major flood events and 200,000 properties were protected due to
flood protection schemes across the country. This highlights the need for us to
efficiently manage our surface water, whether there is too little or too much.
One of the key questions is whether we are able to use past observations to
predict the future? and therefore inform necessary reforms in the water
industry, where we already have a legacy of 200 years of abuse of our water.
The UK needs to be better prepared for shock events such as floods or droughts
so that if we can’t predict them we can deal with them when they do occur. Ian
Barker stated that a clear policy direction was needed to help the water
industry to plan and these policy decisions need to be reinforced at government
level through our regulatory bodies.
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| Image from Surfers Against Sewage |
The other major issue raised in
the debate was customer dissatisfaction with the water industry, prices
continue to rise yet customers struggle to see what benefit they are getting
from the extra money they have to pay out. Prices for South-West water
customers have become unsustainably high, so much so that central government
has had to step in to help customers who can’t afford their basic bills. Tony
Smith highlighted that regulation should be more consumer focused so that water
companies do not focus purely satisfying the regulator and not considering
their customers. A similar problem was highlighted regarding bathing water,
south-west England has the highest proportion of low-income households in
England, yet has the longest length of coastline to keep clean. This cost is
passed onto consumers who are already struggling to keep up with escalating
costs.
Following this discussion, Sonia
Phippard (DEFRA) introduced the new Water Bill which is currently going through
Parliament. While all the details are yet to be agreed the Water Bill will
tackle issues of resilience to future change, growth and investment in our
water infrastructure and will introduce competition for business customers –
meaning if they don’t like the service from their current supplier then they
could opt for gaining their services from another company in a similar way to
the energy sector. The bill will also outline market reforms which will aim to
create retail and upstream competition as a driver for efficiency and quality
of service provided by water companies, these reforms will be rolled out by
2017. Sonia Phippard suggested that it was important to encourage innovation in
the sector and this could be achieved by encouraging new players into the water
sector. For example, it could become possible for smaller water owners to sell
excess water into the system. There will also be a formal review of the responsibility
for water leaks to remove the many grey areas which currently exist; this will
be added later as an amendment to the Water Bill. It was also highlighted that
reforms relating to abstraction from rivers will not be included in the current
bill, but will be covered by future reforms centring around sustainability
which will probably be announced next year. Also water quality will be dealt
with by the next round of EA River Basin Management Plans and so will not be
specifically be covered by the Water Bill.
The current version of the Water
Bill which is currently being introduced into parliament is available at: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/water.html
| John Penrose |
The morning session also saw John
Penrose MP introduce his ‘radical’ paper “We deserve better” which discusses
the current dissatisfaction amongst consumers with utilities and proposes to
introduce reforms which would allow consumers to vote with their feet and
switch supplier if they were not satisfied. It would also give customers the
opportunity to buy from a company which provide ‘green’ water, similar to the
system currently operating in the energy sector. For an executive summary and
the full paper see: http://www.johnpenrose.org/images/wedeservebetter.pdf
The afternoon session began with
interactive workshop sessions, I attended the session on “The impact of extreme
events on freshwater ecosystems”. This session aimed to discuss what is
resilience in freshwater? Where do we need it and do we currently have the
right tools, including science, policy and practise tools. The discussion
highlighted that restoring sections of rivers which were previously engineered
can help ecosystems to recover and make them therefore more resilient if
extreme hydrological or pollution events were to occur. High flow events are of
particular ecological concern as in many areas these events can cause the
combined sewage systems to interact with the river through overflow events,
which will impact on the ecological health of the river. Managing water quality
and maintaining god ecological health is managed through River Basin Management
plans, the second round of which is currently being produced. As a pre-cursor
to the RBMP’s the EA have produced a Challenges and Choices document, more
details can be found at: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/planning/33252.aspx
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| Extreme rainfall at Boscastle, image from Halcrow |
The afternoon session continued
with a keynote address from Dr Vicky Pope (Head of Integration and Growth, Met
Office) who outlined some of the environmental challenges and how the Met
Office is working to tackle some of the current issues. Under the banner of
climate change, northern Europe as already seen an increase in extreme
rainfall. However, one of the biggest challenges is that we do not currently
understand how north Atlantic weather patterns (El Nino, Atlantic multidecadal
oscillation) will change under climate change and therefore how these will
impact of UK weather. This remains one of the main scientific research
questions. From a water sector perspective it is the climate variability rather
than long-term change which is important and therefore the Met Office is
working along with other project partners to provide better seasonal forecasts
and predictions of climate variability as well as to provide better information
regarding storms, drought and storm surges. The Met Office is starting to use
their weather models in ‘climate change mode’ in order to begin to get improved
local detail which is important for water management. This type of research has
not been possible until recently due to lack of computational power, and even
now this can only be one for small areas rather the whole country.
The day was rounded up with a
discussion based around innovation and the need for improved water
infrastructure if a more resilient sector is to be achieved. For example, currently
the UK system relies on members of the public to report leakages rather than
having monitoring systems in place which can detect failures and quickly alert
the water company to the problem. It was quoted that all UK water companies
combined only spent £18 million last year on research and development, despite
huge profits. Currently there is no incentive for water companies to invest in
research and development providing that they satisfy the regulator – market
reforms may help in this respect. That said, some water companies are now
beginning to invest in their local environment as it is becoming more
cost-effective to reduce pollution at its source before it reaches the river
rather than having to clean up the water after abstraction etc. This type of
new thinking provides benefits for both the water industry and the environment,
and any cost savings could hopefully therefore be passed down to the consumer.
The Future Water conference was a
day packed with information and discussion which covered a whole range of
issues facing the water sector, from financial to environmental pressures. It
became clear very quickly that a co-ordinated effort is necessary if we are to
create a water sector which can be resilient to climate change and the
increased demands we are putting on our water and at the same time provide a
service which is affordable and sustainable across the whole country. The
challenge has most definitely been set......
This blog has been written by Dr Charlotte Lloyd, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.
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| Dr Charlotte Lloyd |