Storms and floods: lessons for the water sector

Since late last year storms have plagued the water sector, bringing floods and cutting off water supplies to consumers.

Those worst affected were the northern water companies and, in the wake of the most recent flooding, representatives from United Utilities, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water joined the Consumer Council for Water’s (CCWater’s) board members to explore what the sector can do to help prevent floods in the future. They have asked what measures they can put in place to protect vital assets, such as pumping stations and sewage works, which are at risk from water damage.

Utility Week joined them at a recent CC Water board meeting in Preston to ask, what lessons can water companies take from the latest bout of floods?

1. Flooding can be very localised

United Utilities chief executive Steve Mogford says you could be one side of the mountains in Cumbria and get very severely impacted by flooding, while on the other side you wouldn’t get anything at all. This means where there is flooding, it is incredibly intense.

2. The impacts of the event last much longer than the event itself

Following the devastating Christmas floods, Yorkshire Water says a great deal of silt was deposited in the sewerage system, causing partial blockages and restricted use for customers. From Christmas Day, it took the company until 9 January to get customers back to normal levels of operation.

3. The three phases

Mogford suggests there are three phases to dealing with an incident of extreme weather:

1. A phase where it’s chaotic, and where you don’t know how to respond.
2. A phase where it’s managed and you’ve got information.
3. The blame phase. Once people have dealt with flooding, they begin to ask whose fault it was.

4. Communication with customers is essential

Yorkshire Water says it received more than 5,000 requests from customers for assistance between Christmas 2015 and New Year 2016.

The firm’s director of regulation Adrian Kennedy says this was one of the key learning points for the company. Customers were contacting all agencies trying to get support because they couldn’t tell where the flooding was coming from – whether it was a sewerage matter, a canal overflow, a river, or a local watercourse.

Mogford says UU received a large number of calls on Boxing Day, as its call centre was one of few that were open.

However, Mogford says post-event communication is just as important as communication during the event, and will help customers understand why things have happened and why a certain incident wasn’t preventable.

What’s more, information must be communicated in understandable language, and not water industry technical language.

5. Use social media

UU says it implemented a ‘digital strategy’ off the back of looking at other companies’ strategies. Mogford says that, when a company first starts using social media, it can get “hit very hard” by queries and complaints and it can be difficult to remain on top of things.

Social media is, however, a valuable way of getting messages through and encouraging people to forward information on. It can also be used as a conversation, rather than just a one-way flow. This can sometimes become “unpleasant”, says Mogford, and it is important that companies help their employees to respond and deal with that kind of communication, and resource adequately to be able to deal with it.

6. Realise the benefits of calling in mutual aid support

Yorkshire drafted in extra manpower, essential equipment and support from fellow water companies Wessex Water, Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent Water and Welsh Water, which allowed the company to get on top of a backlog of problems very quickly.

7. Ensure plans are in place to deal with events such as power outages

Kennedy says Yorkshire’s assets were severely impacted by electricity substations being knocked out by the same storms which caused the flooding, meaning a number of water pumping stations were also left without power. However, he says the company made sure “sufficient resources” were deployed, and mobilised the grid and storage, to make sure things were up and running again quickly, meaning no interruptions to supply and no water quality impacts.