Pollutants and chemicals used in industry, agriculture and domestically that enter the water system are costly for the utility to remove; but involving stakeholders from across the catchment to manage the use of pollutants means these risks can be stopped before they become a problem.
Southern Water’s efforts are part of its Catchment First project, which puts catchment management firmly at the centre of decisions made by the company.
Its aim is to improve water quality and minimise risk from pollution incidents by taking a holistic approach to water management.
“We’re taking the prevention is better than cure approach,” says Louisa Gumbrell, catchment risk manager at Southern Water.
She described how the project looks across Southern’s catchments examining anything that could potentially pose a risk to water quality and what mitigation can be prioritised.
Kate Rice, catchment strategy manager, described the difference in Southern’s approach compared with other catchment management projects.
“The urban element stands out; I know a lot of companies are doing rural projects but we’re taking a holistic approach and looking at all the risks. When we’ve talked to farmers, they’re glad we are doing work in urban areas and not just pointing a finger at one sector.”
In urban areas the work involves councils, Highways Agency, Network Rail, industry such as pharmaceutical companies, garden centres and even amenities like golf courses and allotments.
Across the whole region it includes government agencies and local authorities, including Environment Agency, Natural England and Defra; environmental organisations including wildlife trusts, rivers trusts and catchment partnerships; in the farming sector it works with farm clusters, farmers, plant and soil scientists (agronomists) and the National Farmers’ Union.
The teams had to establish and maintain relationships with all these groups and host regular meetings. Rice and Gumbrell say building trust was essential to progress and understanding land use and where pollutants risks are.
By getting to know the landowners and users, the team was able to understand usage and mitigate risks from water source contamination.
One concern for all water companies is the presence of nitrates in water. Although it is widely used on crops and found in septic tanks, if it is ingested it can cause serious harm to infants and even death. The last death in the UK was in the 1950s and related to a shallow well, however, risk of the nitrate interfering with oxygen absorption in the gut – known as “blue baby syndrome” means the World Health Organisation and EU have set the nitrite limit at 50 mg/l.
Across the region the use of nitrate as a fertiliser was measured and farmers found cases where it could be reduced or applied more precisely to the same effect.
As well as the importance of reducing nitrates that need to be removed from water, pesticides used commercially and in allotments can be difficult to remove.
At a cluster meeting with farmers around the River Rother in West Sussex, Gumbrell described the response from the farmers when presented with information about metaldehyde – a pesticide used to kill slugs and snails.
“We wanted to talk to them about substitutions then we had one forward-thinking farmer stand up and say, ‘Ok why don’t we all agree to stop using it?’ We hadn’t expected to jump to such an agreement so quickly, but the co-design meant we didn’t have to pitch to them, it was them coming up with the idea,” she says.
“There was another farmer who stood up and spoke about an alternative product that has good results for the farmer, so it was a case of ‘why not?!’”
Rice added the proposition to phase out metaldehyde by 2021 but says there have been no breaches in that catchment since the farmers stood up and agreed they wouldn’t use it anymore.
“The health of the soil means farmers can use less chemicals, which means the soil is more stable and there’s less run off, which means less flooding. There’s a lot of benefits to it so we’re doing making it a big project,” Rice says.
As well as soil health Southern trialled a grants scheme offering up to £10,000 per farm to help reduce the risk of pollution to water from agriculture. This included improving sprayer and applicator filling and washdown areas, chemical storage and roof and drainage improvements. The grants will be rolled out to high-risk catchments.
The company is also incentivising reductions in nitrate and pesticides, monitoring soil health and advising on grants and best practice.
Across Southern Water’s region there will be six nitrate schemes focusing on chalk sites – the predominant geological feature of the region including the chalk streams that have been called as biodiverse as rainforests.
One project Southern has launched together with the South Downs National Park Authority, EA and local universities and councils is the Chalk Management Partnership (ChaMP) Groundwater Project. Working across rural and urban areas ChaMP worked with farmers to understand how much nitrate fertiliser is used and how the amount could be reduced with more precise application. In urban areas the project is looking to introduce sustainable drainage systems such as rain gardens to treat road run-off by naturally filtering the water before it gets to groundwater sources.
Another urban project is the construction of a ’rain garden’ in Brighton to remove up to 90 per cent of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80 per cent of sediments from the rainwater and surface runoff before it reaches groundwater.
As well as working with farmers to address metaldehyde use, there are seven schemes to reduce the use of certain pesticides and herbicides that find their way into rivers at different times of the year.
There will also be three projects aimed at making abstraction more sustainable in sites on the Isle of Wight and in Hampshire.
For the next spending and investment period, Gumbrell and Rice says Southern are continuing with the major projects across the region and reflecting on achievements so far.
Rice says: “We were quite late to catchment management as a company, so we’ve gone as quickly as we can – speed has been the essence. Now we can slow down and assess what has been achieved and how things can be done differently in the next investment period.
Reflecting on the company’s change in attitude to catchment management, Rice says: “As a company we were fixated on the engineered solution and with drinking water, the important thing is compliance. But with catchment management it can take a long time to see the benefit of a project. The work we are doing on groundwater we might not see a benefit for 15-20 years.”
She says the change in the company has come with the new management led by Ian McAulay.
“He is very enthusiastic about Catchment First and catchment management so there’s been a change from within that’s coming through from the top.”
For the next investment period, Southern plans to invest a further £49 million to manage its catchments to protect the quality and quantity of the water across the region. It will also invest an additional £30 million to raise the quality of two more bathing areas to ‘excellent’ standard and to improve at least five sites to ‘good’ status.