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Marcus Rink, the chief inspector at the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), has warned the water sector to act now to avoid public outcry around lead piping.
Speaking at Utility Week’s Drinking Water Quality Conference, Rink said that while compliance for drinking water quality was excellent – at 99.97% across the UK – little progress had been made on removing lead piping.
“We haven’t done anything about lead since 1972,” he said, and warned it could become “the next storm overflows” in the public eye. “We have not dealt with it for 50 years, so why not?”
Similar to how the use of storm overflows has gained greater public, political and media attention, Rink said the potential health risks associated with lead piping in water supplies could suddenly be deemed publicly unacceptable. He warned water companies to invest now in infrastructure for future generations rather than “get caught napping”.
Investment and infrastructure plans should be drawn up now for the coming 50 years, Rink said.
On wider water quality, the DWI wants to see more companies make water quality their priority as the changing climate forces them to explore adding alternative water resources and supplies to networks to meet the growing population needs.
These, Rink said, must be appropriately risk-assessed and remain on every board’s agenda to reflect Ofwat’s annual survey, which consistently states high water quality is customers’ number one expectation from their suppliers.
Speaking at the same event, Jeanette Sheldon, Jersey Water’s water quality manager, set out the island’s ambition to expand its desalination plant output by 5Ml daily to 16Ml daily on the back of successful operation of its current plant. This would aid Jersey’s expected future water deficit in its water resource management plan (WRMP).
Desalination also features in Anglian’s draft WRMP. The company’s water resources system planner, George Warner explained the region will shift from a surplus to a deficit largely due to the need to improve environmental destinations by reducing abstraction.
The plan includes four potential locations for a desalination plant, which Warner said the region was “likely to require in the longer term” as part of its adaptive strategy in a future investment period.
While interest remains high in desalination, with Southern exploring options for building a plant in Shoreham, Sussex, after scrapping designs for a Hampshire location, there are currently no at-scale plants in the UK. Thames operates a plant in London that was commissioned for the 2012 Olympic Games but is not routinely operated due to high energy consumption and cost to supply.
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