Early in September 2021 we posed three questions to Affinity Water about the supply situation in Uttlesford and it’s impact on the rivers in the district.
Q1. How much of any water saved by your customers will actually end up back in a chalk stream? We fear the answer is none, because any saving will immediately be used to meet increased demand from housing development in your region.
Q2. How does the amount of water customers might save compare to the 162,000,000 litres per day leaked from your under-invested supply network?
Q3. Is it right that the Environment Agency estimates you are over-abstracting i.e. depriving chalk streams, by some 430,000,000 litres per day? That’s equivalent to 172 Olympic swimming pools every day.
Background
Affinity’s replies follow below – but first, a bit of background. We asked these questions because the main source of water for Uttlesford – the chalk aquifer – is being exploited to serve new housing at such a rate it is robbing rivers of their natural flow, which in turn is making the problems of river pollution even worse. In short, our rivers are being sacrificed to meet growing demand for water.
Uttlesford lies within the driest, hottest area of Britain and is at risk of water shortages. In fact, were it not for the massive volume of water being abstracted from the aquifer (beyond its capacity to naturally regenerate) it is likely there would already be a water supply emergency. How then are Affinity going to meet demand from new households in their region?
Affinity are the largest water-only supplier in the UK, with 3.5 million customers. In 2021, in response to growing public concern, Affinity launched ‘SOS – Save Our Streams’ – a campaign to encourage householders to save water. It rather skilfully shifts the focus away from corporate responsibility towards the consumer.
Government policy has much to answer for; but so do the water companies in England, who have woefully under-invested while enjoying a monopoly position. Since privatisation they have passed nearly 60 billion pounds of dividends to their shareholders.
It is notable that at no point do Affinity dispute the figures we quote in our questions. Sadly there is very little in what they say that provides reassurance the situation won’t get a lot worse before it gets better, if ever.
The starkness of the situation is reflected in the savings they expect to achieve by cutting network leakage and reducing household consumption (totalling some 60 million litres per day by 2025) compared to the 430 million litres per day that the chalk aquifer is presently estimated to be over-abstracted. Remember, these astonishing figures are PER DAY.
The company says that it is operating within the abstraction limits set by the Environment Agency (EA). Something must have gone terribly wrong with the licensing system because the EA now says a reduction in aquifer abstraction of 60% is urgently needed to avoid further harm to river ecology.
Affinity’s replies
Q1. How much of any water saved by your customers will actually end up back in a chalk stream? We fear the answer is none, because any saving will immediately be used to meet increased demand from housing development in your region.
Affinity: In our Water Resources Management Plan 2019 we set out how we will provide reliable, resilient, efficient, and affordable water to our customers over the next 80 years, whilst also helping to protect the environment.
We face a tough set of challenges, with the population forecasted to grow by 1.6 Million people in our Central Region by 2080. We have made a commitment to improve our resilience to drought events as well as reduce the amount of water we abstract from existing chalk sources and not developing any new chalk groundwater sources in our Central region.
In order to reduce our abstractions from chalk sources we have identified a number of solutions to ensure we can continue to meet our customer’s demand. This includes a number of regional supply options to increase the water available from non-chalk sources.
Our strategy includes increasing our capability to use water from our shared surface water resource with Anglian Water by installing a new conditioning plant at one of our treatment works. And increasing the connectivity within our network to remove constraints and allow us to transfer water around our central area more easily to effectively “unlock” trapped water.
As well as increasing our supply capacity, we have developed an ambitious demand management strategy in which we have committed to reducing leakage by 50% before 2050 and helping our customers to reduce their demand for water through the Save Our Streams campaign which offers tailored water saving advice and free devices.
The commitment to reduce our abstraction by 30 Ml/d (30 million of litres per day) from chalk catchments by the end of the 2024/25 reporting year means that despite the challenge of increasing growth, this water will remain in the local environment and not be used to meet demand from future housing developments.
Q2. How does the amount of water customers might save compare to the 162,000,000 litres per day leaked from your under-invested supply network?
Affinity: Our demand management strategy includes reductions in both leakage and household consumption. Within our Water Resources Management Plan we have committed to reducing leakage by 50% before 2050 (from our 2015 position) with a lot of these reductions being achieved in the early part of the plan.
By 2024/25 we plan to have reduced leakage by 30% (from that 2015 position), that is equivalent to over 30 Ml/d (30 million litres per day). In contrast we are seeking to achieve a 12.5% reduction by 2025 in Per Capita Consumption which also equates to approximately 30 Ml/d.
Q3. Is it right that the Environment Agency estimates you are over-abstracting i.e. depriving chalk streams, by some 430,000,000 litres per day? That’s equivalent to 172 Olympic swimming pools every day.
Affinity: To meet the demand of our customers Affinity Water currently abstract around 60% of the water needed from groundwater sources, not all of these are chalk sources.
Our abstraction is regulated by The Environment Agency (EA) and we operate all our sources within the licence conditions set by the EA. In the Upper Cam two of our sources have a licence condition for river support which we fully support and adhere to. We continue to work with the EA to investigate the impact of our groundwater abstraction (AMP6 investigation).
As well as providing river support we are also working with the British Geological Survey to remap the geology of the catchment which will help us understand groundwater – surface water interaction, as the Cam in the upper reaches is not a typical chalk stream.
As part of our wider commitment on helping to improve the ecological health of 14 chalk rivers across our supply area, we are undertaking a programme of river restoration works to improve habitat and connectivity.
Scoping work and initial stakeholders engagement will happen this Autumn/Winter to look at restoration options along the sections of the Cam that we are focusing on. We would welcome your involvement and feedback and will ensure you are included within that engagement.