Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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Turning threats into opportunities The Talk: events P aul Valleley, director of water services at Anglian Water, opened proceedings with an overview of the threats, risks and opportunities facing the water sector over the next five years. He said: "One of the challenges that is particular to Anglian Water is that we live in a water stressed area. Despite the deluge of rain, believe it or not there are still parts of the region that I look a•er that are signifi- cantly below normal water levels. We get less (rain) than other parts of the country." Because of this the water company is having to examine how it moves water around the region and the impact this might have on drinking water quality. Valleley added: "Mixing waters, moving waters – all those things are going to be significant technical challenges as we go forward." Talking about the metaldehyde ban, Val- leley said: "This time five years ago metalde- hyde was a massive challenge. It was there, we were measuring it and we were failing to comply with drinking water standards around it. We had to take action. This was undertaken and we have a achieved a level of success in driving down the amount of metaldehyde non-compliance that we've seen." Valleley told attendees that collaborating with others in the sector had also been key in tackling the metaldehyde challenge. "Where we deal with new challenges that we face, we've got to get out of our water bubble and go and speak with the people that contribute to the lead challenge that we face. With metaldehyde we knew that we couldn't achieve it on our own. We had to engage and speak to others. "We've got to make sure that threats become opportunities." Marcus Rink, chief inspector of the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), gave a presentation entitled 'Drinking water regu- lation in the EU'. Within this he updated attendees on preparing for the new drinking water directive and discussed some of the debates within it. The directive specifically mentions a training strategy for plumbers, with Rink DWI, Environment Agency and DEFRA. The whole supply chain of the chemical industry has been involved with this and has cooperated very well. "This has led to some important under- standings on the part of the industry. Firstly, how vulnerable our chemical supply chain is. A lot of manufacturing is not done in the UK anymore, it's imported from all sorts of places – not just from Europe and the EU – but from other places outside of that and it is shipped through the EU." According to Taylor, understanding how the supply chain operates in this area is vital. He added: "It's important to have that understanding because it improves the realisation of the risks that exist. There is a concern about the supply chain and there is more work that's being done to look at that at the moment." The WWT Drinking Water Quality Con- ference was held in Birmingham on 27 November 2019 and was sponsored by Anglian Water, Idexx and Evoqua. The fourth annual WWT Drinking Water Quality Conference assessed funding priorities for water companies, looked at issues surrounding the metaldehyde ban, and explored opportunities to raise customer awareness in tackling lead. Alec Peachey reports. remarking: "What we're expecting here is that plumbers should be adequately trained at an appropriate standard to understand what the regulations are. If you look at the NVQ standard now, there is nothing about regulation in NVQ 1. They can go out and plumb and have no idea of their obligations and not meet the required standards." Bob Taylor, CEO of Portsmouth Water, provided an insight on funding priorities in AMP7. As part of this he talked about some of the challenges around Brexit and ensur- ing the continuity of supply for chemicals that are used in water treatment and waste- water treatment. "We've put together an Incident Manage- ment structure – the first of its kind in our industry – and it has been very success- ful. Obviously, we haven't gone through Brexit yet and our plans are on hold at the moment until that time presumably comes. We're ready to swing into action." Multiple stakeholders make up the structure, with Taylor adding: "It isn't just the water companies, it's our regulator, the www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | JANUARY 2020 | 7 In association with: Sponsored by: