Water & Wastewater Treatment

12 | MARCH 2016 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk Industry leader Jo Harrison, Asset Management Director, United Utilities "To meet our challenges we've got to be innovative, we've got to do things differently." Interview by James Brockett O ne of the challenges for water asset management from AMP6 onwards is that many potential solutions that utilities are being encouraged to consider in the new Totex landscape do not actually involve assets. Whether it is on the water or wastewater side, catchment solutions can bring significant potential rewards as well as being attractive from a sustainability viewpoint. But how do water companies move these initiatives beyond evidence-gathering pilots and into their day-to-day decision- making? These are among the questions that are front of mind for Jo Harrison, Director of Asset Management at United Utilities, who is charged with strategic planning for the wholesale business of the north west water and sewerage firm. UU has run what it calls its Sustainable Catchment Management Programme (SCAMP) for ten years, but until recently this has concentrated on land it owns, with initiatives such as moorland restoration in the Lake and Peak districts. In AMP6, the company is being more ambitious and rolling this out to its non- owned land, working with farmers in Cheshire on land management practices that affect water quality. It is also investigating the part that catchment solutions can play on the wastewater side through a pilot, 'Catchment Wise', which will see them work with farmers near the River Ellen in Cumbria to eliminate phosphate pollution. "Through SCAMP, we have established a very robust end-to-end process for managing our water catchments; we've done a lot of work with third parties, particularly the RSPB and the Rivers Trust, to ensure that we can manage water quality in the right way," explains Harrison. "We are now looking at how we can roll out that same approach with regard to wastewater. Essentially, our Catchment Wise pilot is looking to find out how we can achieve outcomes in terms of phosphate reduction within watercourses in a much cheaper and more sustainable way, by working with farmers, than we could do by investing in our treatment works. In effect, it's offsetting the impact of our operations, allowing us to deliver on our targets much more effectively." Harrison says there is no doubt that UU's catchment work has delivered significant benefits in terms of environmental water quality. The problem comes in quantifying these benefits in a way that can be compared with asset alternatives, and satisfying both internal decision-makers and regulators that the changes achieved are permanent. These are obstacles that remain before catchment approaches can tick all the boxes from a Totex perspective, Harrison says. "One of the key issues for us - and I'm sure this would be the case in other companies as well - is that when you are going through your company business planning processes, you are accounting for a lot of these requirements in

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