Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/1057079
wwtonline.co.uk | DECEMBER 2018 WET NEWS 9 T he water industry is applying 'systems thinking' to ensure it can respond quickly to incidents and ensure the public retain confidence in its service, delegates heard at WWT's Drinking Water Quality conference. Giving the opening address to the conference on 8 November, Northumbrian Water Group chief executive Heidi Mottram said that customers take it for granted that their water will be clean, clear and taste good, and that as well as fulfilling this expectation, she wanted her company to earn the trust and confidence of the customer. "We want customers to have a high level of confidence in what we are doing," she said. "But confidence takes a lot of time to earn and can very easily be lost if you do the wrong things." She cited Northumbrian's catchment management to manage source water quality, its programme to eliminate lead pipes, and its efforts to reduce Cryptosporidium risk as examples of work that was helping to build confidence and resilience. Drinking Water Inspectorate chief inspector Marcus Rink said that Mean Zonal Compliance for public water supplies in England and Wales remains at the high level of 99.96 per cent, and that there had been little movement in this for over a decade. However, he said that the industry's progress against the two measures introduced by the Inspectorate in 2014 – the Compliance Risk Index (CRI) and the Event Risk Index (ERI) – was encouraging. "We know that the number of events isn't changing – and that accidents will always happen – but we can clearly see that companies are handling those events better," Rink said. He said one area where water companies could • DWI chief inspector says while accidents will always happen, it is clear that companies are handling events better, and United Utilities are among those to improve practices 'Systems thinking' helps build confidence in drinking water improve was proactively informing customers when changes are made to their source water – even if there might be no health risk, customers would still want an explanation for any difference in the water's taste and this is the best way of avoiding complaints. He also said that the number of applications for additional abstractions during the hot weather in June and July this year showed there was room for improvement in drought planning. Martin Padley, director of water and scientific services at United Utilities, told the conference that since the Franklaw Cryptosporidium incident in 2015, the company had made great strides in implementing systems thinking to "understand and address vulnerabilities and single points of failure". He said the company was working to embed effective, sustainable risk management, and that this was delivering both performance and resilience improvements. The most important element of this approach is the Integrated Control Centre, which now incorporates SCADA systems from all individual treatment works and SCADA dashboards for other points in the network too. These are monitored regularly and comprehensively so that the company is not dependent simply on alarms. United Utilities is also working through a phased programme of shutdowns and restarts of each of its water treatment works to test resilience, and is investing in flood protection of its assets and in a phased replacement of the Haweswater Aqueduct. Other highlights of the conference included an update on a new WRAS campaign to enforce compliance with water fittings regulations by targeting major retailers, and details of Dwr Cymru Welsh Water's catchment management work, which is treating the Brecon Beacons as a 'mega catchment'. The WWT Drinking Water Quality Conference was held on 8th November 2018 in Birmingham in association with Northumbrian Water and sponsored by ATi and SNC-Lavalin Atkins. DWI chief inspector Marcus Rink takes the stage at the conference CONFERENCE WHEN IT COMES TO THE SAFE TRANSPORTATION OF DRINKING WATER CHOOSE PROTECTA-LINE FOR MORE DETAILS VISIT WWW.GPSUK.COM OR CALL 01480 442600 BARRIER PIPE AND FITTINGS SYSTEM Over the last 20 years Protecta-Line has helped supply clean water through contaminated land for every leading water utility BARRIER PIPE AND FITTINGS SYSTEM Protecta-Line is a major award winning, fully integrated barrier pipe & fittings system BARRIER PIPE AND FITTINGS SYSTEM Protecta-Line is the most widely used barrier pipe in the UK BARRIER PIPE AND FITTINGS SYSTEM THE TRIED & TRUSTED BARRIER SYSTEM