Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | AUGUST 2022 | 33 Water Conference report Pollution is more than CSOs Utility Week Innovate's inaugural Pollution Mitigation, Management and Risk Conference met in June to discuss how to enhance sewer networks, prevent incidents and drive engagement. A day aer the newly constituted Office for Environmental Protection announced its first investigation into whether regulators have failed to meet their duties relating to Combined Sewer Over- flows in England, the conference showcased industry approaches to the "chemical cock- tail" watercourses deemed to be endangering both public and environmental health. Despite public clamour, Phillip Dunne MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Com- mittee, argued that there is "no quick fix" for decades of underinvestment and an issue he insists it is a multi-stakeholder problem. Water companies have responded by pub- lishing progressive Pollution Incident Reduc- tion Plans (PIRPs), oen outlining twin-track approaches between capital investment and operational activities spanning predictive behaviour using data and artificial intelli- gence, and nature-based solutions. Pollution performance has ultimately been improving, but Iain Vosper, operations director of waste- water at South West Water, emphasised the need to go "further and faster" to tackle the likes of blockages, bursts and breakdowns at the root of pollution issues. Steve Kaye, chief executive of UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR), added that despite recent publicity and pain points, it was essential that the sector looks beyond sewer overflows and both innovates and col- laborates more broadly. He explained that many sewage network issues stem from dwellings, toilets, sinks drains, sewage works, sources of run-off, and pollutants such as plastic waste from car tires as well as fats, oils, and greases – and all of them should be examined more closely. "If you put each pipe end-to-end it comes to something like 350,000km of sewer in the UK, and 11 billion litres of wastewater that's conveyed by those sewers," he said. "It's a massive asset base and maybe the focus shouldn't all be on sewer overflows – there are lots of other things that we need to look at as well." As far as solutions go, Kaye highlighted the importance of incorporating real-time control systems, improved biological pro- cesses and digital solutions alongside improvements to treatment works and sewer overflows. Kaye also flagged the importance of establishing a collaborative and consistent approach to pollution data. "Data sensors, and getting all your data together in an inte- grated way, is the future," he said. "Let's try and create one platform rather than lots, there's scope for a national project on that." Chris Giles, head of wastewater recycling at Severn Trent, also outlined data and sen- sor strategies spanning multiple stakehold- ers as essential to preventing blockages from becoming pollution. "I don't see one sensor and one type of solution making a difference – it will be lots of different types of sensors," he said. Giles added that pairing such tech inno- vation with "people strategy" will be essen- tial in tackling pollution challenges. "People have the ideas, the passion, that's what really drives change," he said. "We've really dialled up the courage to test things and fail and the curiosity over what everyone else is doing." More broadly, Kaye said that "plugging in" different stakeholders will be central to progress. "Tackling pollution is about doing things in collaboration – with customers, regulators, water companies, academics, agriculture – let's bring people together," he explained. "It's about how we tackle this holistically, and with more focus on optimis- ing, enhancing and maintaining assets." Kaye continued that further engagement and education of the public on behavioural changes could yield positive knock-on effects for sewage networks and assets further along the pipeline. "We can educate customers on things like fats, oils and greases, and on unflushables," he said. "If we can stop things getting into the sewers and get water usage down, it'll have a positive effect further down the line." Ultimately, fundamental to developing far-reaching innovative solutions to pollu- tion mitigation and management challenges – and calling last orders on "chemical cock- tails" – is overcoming what Siemens UK head of Internet of Things Adam Cartwright referred to as innovation's "valley of death" – the jump in scale between a minimum via- ble product and a system-wide solution. "In a minimum viable product, you're focused on pace and technical risk, whereas at an operation or production stage, you're concerned about scalability and commercial risk," he explained. Cartwright stressed that while it's not a water firm's job to take on a supplier's commercial risk, continuing to collaborate beyond the minimum viable product stage ensures that innovation can be deployed at scale and more quickly. "If we imagine we've got these differ- ent stages of development of a digital solu- tion, and you've got these different types of resources, what oen happens in a digital development is because the tools are so accessible and so quick, you can get proof of concept really fast," he said. "We can then take that for a minimum viable product. The step to then go from that to production – these things that mean the can work in operation – I think is actually a massive step in terms of resources." Stuart Stone, editor, Utility Week Innovate Headline conference sponsor

• Cover