Water & Wastewater Treatment

12 | JULY 2017 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk I t's impossible to consider a challenge as large as drought resilience within the boundaries of an individual water company: many of the problems and solutions apply to whole regions of the UK, and with multiple stakeholders and sectors impacted, there is a clear need for national leadership on the issue. One of the industry figures who is lending a voice to that national conversation is Jean Spencer, Director of Strategic Growth and Resilience at Anglian Water. Appointed to her new role in April a€er more than a decade at the utility as Regulation Director, her new job title displays the priority that Anglian is placing on resilience issues. At a national level, Spencer sat on Ofwat's Resilience Task and Finish Group which came up with the widely held definition of resilience for the water industry; she then went on to chair the steering group for Water UK's Water Resources Long Term Planning Framework. Published in September, this report described the kind of approach that would be needed to build national drought resilience over the next 50 years. Explaining her involvement, Spencer tells WWT: "Back in autumn 2015, with the new resilience duties coming in, we were really looking at what resilience "We might talk about transfers of water, but first and foremost, water is local, and the question is how we make the most of the resources in our region." means, as a company and as a sector. The minister at the time, Rory Stewart, asked water companies what was on our minds and what our main worries were. Our chief executive [Peter Simpson] was quite clear that our key concern was drought – imagine, Anglian Water without water! So as a result of that, work was set up to look at the water resource priorities for England and Wales over the next 25 and 50 years, and I volunteered to lead that under the auspices of Water UK." Involving all of the water companies and regulators, the work resulted in last September's report which made a number of recommendations to tackle the 'significant and growing risk of severe drought'. These recommendations included introducing consistent national minimum levels of resilience, a national resource plan to-ordinate the current catchment-based ones, and a 'twin track' approach of demand management measures together with supply enhancement and transfers. The report has already influenced policy: for example, the Environment Agency has asked water companies to work to a base standard of a 1-in-200 year drought when preparing water resource management plans, where previously there was significant variation. It has also concentrated minds on the importance The Talk: interview of demand management measures, while optioneering continues on projects such as new reservoirs and pipelines to facilitate water transfers. "The first and foremost option is demand management, it's reducing consumption by working with customers," says Spencer. "Where there is still going to be a supply-demand deficit, then the next thing you look at is transfers. The costs of those are now being modelled, and potentially you need storage to go with those transfers. The issue to be aware of with transfers, though, is to ask how reliable they would be in a drought - if you are in a drought, the probability is that your neighbouring company is affected too. That's what the report highlighted, and we are now in the muck and bullets of doing the modelling that will inform our water resource management plan." Since privatisation more than 25 years ago, Anglian Water has 30% more people living in its region, but it still puts the same amount of water into supply, Spencer points out. This shows what can be achieved by cutting leakage and implementing demand management; there is no reason why the company should not be able to cope with future growth by continuing these efforts, but the need to reduce abstraction and keep In this WWT profile interview Jean Spencer, Director of Strategic Growth and Resilience at Anglian Water, talks about the challenge of building drought resilience in the East of England and across the country. Interview by James Brockett

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