Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | february 2015 | 13 these alternative approaches." Despite this, Wessex is also undertaking its fair share of large capital schemes during AMP6. The largest of these is the comple- tion of its water supply grid, a £220M, multi- purpose investment in pipeline and storage infrastructure which was started in AMP5 and is expected to be finished in 2018. The project will mean water can be transferred with ease from the south of Wessex's area, where water is more plentiful, to the north, which is more prone to shortages. The grid will also help com- munities that rely on a single aquifer as their water source to enjoy better security of supply, while ensuring more uniform water quality. Finally, the grid is likely to leave Wessex with a water surplus which can be sold to neighbour- ing utilities when they need it. Skellett says that the work on the grid is around two-thirds complete, with around £70M worth of work still to be done in this AMP period. "People have talked a lot about having a na- tional grid for water, but you'll never get that, because water is heavy, difficult and expensive to move around," he says. "But local grids make a lot of sense – companies having local grids that are then interlinked to a neighbour- ing company's grid, enabling you to have that flexibility in your water resources." On the wastewater side of the business, Wessex is continuing to upgrade its coastal sewerage assets in order to minimise CSO overflows, with a recently completed project in Weston-Super-Mare to be followed soon by a similar one in Burnham-on-Sea. The new, stricter Bathing Water Directive that will come into force this year is likely to be a tough hur- dle for many UK beaches and it is incumbent on sewerage companies to make sure they are playing their part, says Skellett. "We have no problems with bathing water Path to the top born in Nottingham, Colin Skellett trained as scientist and an engineer, and is a fellow of the royal Society of Chemistry. His first job was as a chemist at a sewage works in Nottinghamshire He joined Wessex Water when it was first formed in 1974, and became chief executive in 1988, overseeing its transition to privatisation Skellett became the company's executive chairman following Wessex Water's ill-fated takeover by Enron in 1999. The company has enjoyed stable ownership since being bought by Malaysian conglomerate yTL in 2002 He also chairs the West of england Local enterprise Partnership tivising and engaging agriculture is not a new approach, but it is one that will flourish under the Totex regime as an alternative to asset- based solutions, says Skellett. Catchment management solutions "Take a simple example, nitrates and pesti- cides," he explains. "The most economically and environmentally satisfactory solution is working with farmers and others to change behaviours, so you don't get nitrates going into the water or they are not a problem. The least environmentally satisfactory, and the most expensive, solution is to build a plant to try to treat the substances. So Totex is a really big step forward in encouraging those changes in behaviours. "We've been doing catchment management schemes for the last 20 years, and one of our complaints used to be that you are actually disadvantaged from doing it - it's added to your operating costs, whereas if you spend capital, you get a return on that capital. That's now gone, so I think we'll see an acceleration of below: Colin Skellett pictured with Wessex Water colleagues Drummond Modley (l) and Martin Wood (rt)

• Cover