Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | AugusT 2014 | 7 Industry leaders "T he biggest challenge for water by a long way is the developing impact of climate change. That's go- ing to determine everything that happens in water policy over the next 30 to 40 years." So says outgoing chairman of the Environ- ment Agency (EA) Lord Chris Smith – though he will stay in post a little longer than expected. When we meet in his Westminster office mid-July, just days before his due depar- ture date after two three-year terms in post, he reveals the secretary of state has just asked him to stay on an extra couple of months. His successor, ex-Arup executive chairman Philip Dilley, is due to start on 8th September, so Smith will bridge the gap until the day before. For the water industry, climate change and extreme weather patterns throw up two priority issues: the need to expertly manage water resources and flood risk. In the case of the former, Smith has his sights firmly set on abstraction reform. Making progress The EA is already making progress on tackling unsustainable abstractions; since 2008 it has changed 107 licences, returning 75 billion litres of water a year to the environment, and is working on changing 377 more. But Smith is itching to rationalise what he describes as "the somewhat haphazard nature of abstrac- tion rights" going forward. Both Defra and the Welsh Government are committed to abstraction reform; just two days before this interview, they published respons- es to a consultation that closed in March 2014 which proposed two options for making the system more flexible and for linking access to water to water availability. The plan is to make policy decisions next year and to implement them in the 2020s. Smith just wants something done. He says: "It has to be sorted out. We can't continue with the status quo sensibly, especially with climate change bringing more ex- tremes of weather and more extremes of flow. We are potentially going to see more periods of flood and more periods of drought. Where you've got seriously diminished flow and some of the automatic abstraction rights that exist at the moment, you cannot manage and plan for a river catchment properly. So it has to be sorted out. In a way I don't mind how the government gets there." Smith is no stranger to the second Lord Chris Smith Chairman Environment Agency "The biggest challenge for water by a long way is the developing impact of climate change" KarMa OcKenden FreelAnce journAlisT, speciAlising in The WATer secTor "We can't continue with the status quo sensibly, especially with climate change bringing more extremes of weather and more extremes of flow "

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