Water management - Case study

Cold weather challenges	Langford recycling	Start
Home Water Survey 2010, Working with B.O.P.H	Little Green Riding Hood

Start

NWL has joined the national Start initiative set up by The Prince’s Charities Foundation to promote and celebrate sustainable living. The initiative aims to inform and help people across the UK to lead more sustainable lives and show them how they can take positive and practical steps to create a cleaner, healthier and more energy efficient future.

Start’s objective is to present an inspiring picture of a sustainable future by highlighting the best examples of sustainable practice in the UK. As many campaigns on climate change focus on what we shouldn’t be doing, Start will aim to place emphasis not only on what we should be stopping, but on what we should be starting, as many people are confused about what they can do to make a difference.

Partners include ASDA, B&Q and Marks and Spencer and a wide range of environmental non-government organisations are supporters. By joining the initiative we aim to raise awareness of the vital role the water sector plays in sustainable living and use our links with Start’s other partners to promote water efficiency to their staff and customers.

Little Green Riding Hood

Our ‘Bad Habits Cost the Earth’ campaign teaches the importance of water efficiency and highlights how making small changes to our lifestyles and the way we use water can have a big impact on the environment. The campaign will encourage everyone, from young children to grandparents, to save at least one litre of water per home, per day over the next five years.

As part of the campaign we have worked with theatre company Fame Factory Spotlight to promote water efficiency messages to primary school children through a fun and interactive performance – Little Green Riding Hood. The one hour play uses the original Little Red Riding Hood story with an environmental twist to teach the children about using water wisely in an engaging and entertaining way.

So far over 13,000 school children aged between 4 and 11 years in schools in both the north east and Essex and Suffolk regions have viewed the performance and taken part in the accompanying half hour workshop which reinforces the water efficiency messages portrayed in the pantomime. Workshop exercises emphasise the message that we can all make small changes to our lifestyles – such as turning off the tap when brushing teeth – to make a big difference to the environmental cost of wasting water.

Children take part in activities where they learn about good and bad water habits and are taught to appreciate the value of water. During the workshop they are given two raindrops and asked to write down one bad habit and one good habit. Their bad habits are then taken away from them and the remaining good habits are hung from a rainbow that remains within the school as a reminder of what they have learnt.

We estimate that for every school visit 2,100 litres of water per day will be saved through the children’s changed habits and pester power after they have passed on lessons learnt to their families.

Home Water Survey 2010, Working with B.O.P.H

Essex & Suffolk Water sought the help of B.O.P.H (Business Opportunities for the Physically Handicapped) to assist with their Home Water Survey 2010. Volunteers from the Canvey Island based charity prepared thousands of letters and water saving packs to help customers use water wisely. The packs were then delivered to around 5,000 residents in the area by our technicians.

The Water Survey pack contained a survey to assess a household’s current water usage and products to help save water in the home and garden, including a shower timer, trigger hose gun, save-a-flush and water storing crystals. Customers who took part in a similar project in 2009 are now on average saving 25 litres of water every day. This is equivalent to each customer saving 112 full baths per year or flushing the toilet over 1,000 times.

To thank them for their support Essex & Suffolk Water donated £3,000 to the charity, which relies entirely on donations and fundraising to keep running. B.O.P.H provides people who are disabled or have learning difficulties with a normal working environment when they leave school. This gives them stability in their lives, the chance to enhance their personal development and maximises their potential while carers are given much needed respite.

Joan Lythgoe from B.O.P.H said, “We are so pleased that Essex & Suffolk Water involved us with the Home Water Survey. It is great to be involved in a project that will help water customers in our area protect the environment. It has given everyone here an enormous sense of pride to undertake this valuable work.”

Dave Pearse, project manager from Essex & Suffolk Water, said: “It’s incredibly heart warming to see the fantastic work that is going on at B.O.P.H. The charity clearly has an enormously positive impact on the people they work with. By supporting us with the Water Survey 2010, B.O.P.H is helping make the most of our precious water resources, which is particularly important in this area as it is the driest part of the UK”.

Cold weather challenges

Freezing weather conditions over an unusually prolonged period at the beginning of 2010 stretched resources and challenged the business to respond effectively to ensure customer service and regulatory compliance were affected as little as possible.  The cold snap had a big impact on distribution networks around the company, resulting in a significant increase in the number of bursts and leaks.

In the north, between Wednesday 6th January and Thursday 14th January 2010, 1,254 calls were received by customers reporting suspected leaks. Between Saturday 2nd January and Sunday 10th January the daily demand for water increased from 743Mld to 839Mld (12%). Around 350 leaks were repaired between Wednesday 6th January and Thursday 14th January with the busiest day seeing 65 leaks repaired.  In Essex, over 400 calls were received during the same period with reports of suspected leaks. On Sunday 10th January the conditions resulted in a demand of an additional 45Mld being placed on the Essex system, which is an 11% increase. Distribution technicians attended nearly 800 site visits and over 400 leaks were repaired in just a nine day period.

Langford recycling

The Essex part of our southern area is one of the driest counties in the country and used to import over 50% of its water from outside its boundary.  Due to environmental constraints, no additional water was available within Essex so innovative solutions had to be found.

The Langford recycling scheme uses biological, chemical and ultra-violet light treatments to disinfect, and remove phosphate, nitrate and ammonia from waste water that is currently piped into the Blackwater Estuary. The treated water is released into the River Chelmer, providing more water for pumping to our Hanningfield reservoir and for our Langford water treatment works, further downstream.  There, the abstracted water undergoes treatment to bring it up to drinking water standards. 

The scheme is the first of its kind in the UK and is the result of 10 years of research and development.  We worked closely with the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate during the development of the scheme. It will provide up to 30Ml of water a day, equivalent to 17.8 Olympic-sized swimming pools and represents 8% of additional water resources.

Construction on the scheme began in the autumn of 2000.  The contractors were members of the Construction Federations’ Considerate Construction Scheme and the scheme won the bronze prize at the annual Considerate Construction Awards.  We regularly liaised with local people, keeping them informed of activities on the site and ensured that we protected the environment.  Working with English Nature and Essex Wildlife Trust we relocated slowworms and lizards and re-routed a pipeline to avoid disturbing a badger sett that was found on the site.

The Langford recycling plant, which cost £14.5 million, was opened by Jonathan Porritt in 2003.  The plant's state of the art technology has attracted national and international attention and has won several big awards including a golden apple at the Green Apple Environmental Awards.