Water resources planning
Growth and water demand in Essex
Essex is a growing and dynamic county. Since the 1960s, population in the region has grown by 18%. Today this growth continues, more new homes are being built across Essex to fulfil the population needs. The demand for water in the Essex supply area is predicted to rise by around 6% over the next 25 years, almost entirely due to an increase in population.
Essex is the driest county in the UK receiving on average less than 600 mm of rain a year, which is two thirds of the average for England and Wales. Only half the water supplied in the Essex area is sourced from within the county. In a dry year up to one third of the required water is derived from the Ely Ouse to Essex Transfer Scheme (EOETS), which transfers water from Denver in Norfolk, via pipelines and pumping stations to the River Stour and River Blackwater in Essex. Low average rainfall and rising demand for water creates significant challenges to fulfil the needs of a growing population.
Water Resources Plan
The Essex & Suffolk Water Resource Plan takes a long-term outlook forecasting demand for water over a 25 year period. The current plan looks ahead to 2030 outlining what the company is doing to manage increasing demand for water, following a twin track approach:
• Managing the demand for water by reducing leakage, installing water meters and promoting water efficiency programmes.
• Investigating and implementing new, sustainable long-term water resource schemes.
Investigating Water Resource Schemes
Essex & Suffolk Water has completed many comprehensive studies, investigating all options to develop additional water resources in Essex.
The range of alternatives considered includes:
• demand management options - such as further leakage control, increased provision and promotion of metering and water efficiency;
• new reservoir storage – as an alternative to enlarging Abberton Reservoir, over 250 potential sites were considered for creating new reservoirs or increasing the capacity of existing reservoirs; and
• a wide range of other new water resource options - such as canal transfers, transfer of water from the River Trent and desalination.
The ongoing programme of demand management (including metering, leakage reduction and water efficiency) is not sufficient to ensure that demand can be met into the future within the Essex resource zone. Hence new water resource schemes are required. Due to the lack of intrinsic water availability within Essex, traditional water resource development is not possible and hence innovative solutions, such as recycling water that would otherwise be lost to sea (as at Langford) or large strategic water resource schemes have to be implemented.
The River Trent and canal transfer options are effectively Abberton Scheme alternatives (as they would also require raw water storage and use of the Ely Ouse Essex Transfer Scheme). Most of the other options available to ESW would be limited in the volume of additional water that they could provide and would not delay the need to take forward the Abberton Scheme.
Desalination was not selected because of the high economic and environmental costs resulting from its predicted energy consumption and the limited amount of desalinated water that could be used in the Essex system because of water quality issues.
The Abberton Scheme was therefore selected as the most appropriate means of providing sufficient water to meet the predicted demand over the next twenty five years.