Water & Wastewater Treatment

www.wwtonline.co.uk | WWT | DECEMBER 2015 | 15 greater degree of co-operation and customer engagement but actually if you achieve those things they perform better than we expected," says Wilson. "We are taking more water out, and attenuating better storms, than we ever predicted we would." Customer engagement is also at the heart of Welsh Water's 'Stop the Block' campaign which seeks to educate customers about what can and cannot be • ushed or disposed of down the drain. Wilson says that the campaign has been most e• ective in smaller communities where it is possible to reach the whole community by multiple contact points; in large urban areas, initiatives tend to be less e• ective. But the key to all customer engagement is building up trust, he says. "I'm a strong believer that how you can succeed in customer engagement is based on your trustability," says Wilson. "Customers have to trust you as an entity before you can even start that kind of work, otherwise it's just noise. So really focusing on engaging the trust of your customers to build that legitimacy has to be a major part of that initiative before you can start making progress." The utility runs a 'Diolch' scheme ('thankyou' in Welsh) where customers can nominate DCWW employees who they think have done a good job. Wilson is particularly proud of the fact that wastewater teams now receive more 'Diolch' nominations than they do complaints. Other AMP6 initiatives for DCWW include transforming its main control room into a 'Smart Hub', sta• ed by skilled analysts who can interpret the increasing amount of data coming from monitoring technology in the sewer network. This technology includes not only • ow and level monitors in the sewers but a roll-out of more than 2000 event and duration monitors on combined sewer over• ows (CSOs). However, Wilson admits to some trepidation about how the data from the CSOs will be viewed by the industry and customers. "As we start to roll out all these event and duration monitors we will start to see how frequently some of our combined sewer over• ows actually operate," he says. "Wales is a wet part of the UK, and this data is not really known; it's been invisible to customers. "Now, suddenly we are going to have all this data in the public domain around how frequently our CSOs operate. It's still a very hard concept to get over to the public - there is no good story about CSOs as far as the public is concerned, because it is untreated sewage, no matter how dilute, going into the environment." Wales has just 15% of the UK's coastline yet has over a third of the UK's blue • ag beaches, which should be evidence enough that the coastal environment is in "pretty good shape" he says. In the light of this, he warns that there is a danger that reducing CSO discharges becomes seen as an end in itself rather than thinking in terms of the environment impact. "Given the European view of how the urban wastewater treatment directive should operate, it could drive us into a situation where we are not looking at the environmental impact, we are just looking at the straight number of CSOs operating, and that could drive investment in a way which actually isn't really improving the environment but would divert a lot of funds," says Wilson. "The work we've done in Llanelli shows us how much money it costs to actually get in and do something about that. We are going to need quite a bit of time, a number of AMP periods, to be able to uncouple surface water from our drainage network. It's not an overnight activity. So my concern is how we are going to manage that process over the long term, without being bounced into throwing huge amounts of investment to chase headline numbers which actually don't have that much of an environmental impact." Hear more from Steve Wilson at WWT's Wastewater 2016 conference, 28th January, 2016, in Birmingham. Info: wwt-wastewater.net › Steve Wilson: CV ● Steve Wilson grew up in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria and graduated from Brunel University in London with a degree in Environmental Chemistry. He also holds a postgraduate qualifi cation from Cranfi eld University. ● Prior to joining Welsh Water, he was Head of Wastewater for Kelda Water Services (Wales) and before that he worked in the US and in Scotland on wastewater operations contracts held by Kelda. ● Appointed Director of Wastewater Services in 2011, Wilson is responsible for the operation of above and below ground wastewater assets for Welsh Water. This includes over 880 wastewater treatment works and 34,000km of sewers across Wales, Herefordshire and Deeside. ● You can hear more from Steve Wilson at WWT's Wastewater 2016 conference, 28th January in Birmingham, where he will be presenting on 'Customers, compliance and cost - striking the right balance for sewerage networks'. Info: wwt-wastewater.net CSO monitoring data could present a communication challenge with customers, says Wilson

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