Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water Draft Water Resource Management Plan 2013 EXECUTIVE REPORT Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water Pentwyn Road, Nelson, Treharris Mid Glamorgan CF46 6LY www.dwrcymru.com Dŵr Cymru Cyfyngedig, is a limited company registered in Wales No. 2366777 Page | i Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water dWRMP 2013 Executive Report Preface One of our most important functions is to maintain safe and reliable supplies of drinking water to our customers. We do this by looking ahead to gauge the effects of climate change and the likely future demands of our domestic and business customers alike, whilst balancing these against the water available for supply, even in the driest years. In recognition of how important this is for our customers, we publish a Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) which describes how we will manage and develop our available water resources every 5 years. This document is Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water’s draft Water Resource Management Plan covering the period 2015 to 2040. It describes how we intend to maintain water supplies for all of our 1.3 million domestic and 110,000 business customers in Wales and those adjoining parts of England. We want our customers to receive a safe and reliable service which meets all their expectations, at a price they can afford. It is therefore important to us that our stakeholders and customers are involved in the key decisions affecting how we should achieve that goal. We want your views on whether our Plan reflects the appropriate balance between the financial, social and environmental costs of the options open to us in maintaining water supplies into the future. Indeed we would welcome comments on any aspect of our Plan. Given the importance of the Plan, your comments should be sent in the first instance to the Welsh Government, who will then pass them on to us. Comments should be sent by email or post to the Welsh Government at either of the following addresses: By post to: By email to: [email protected] Water Branch Water Resource Management Plans Consultation Welsh Government Cathays Park Cardiff CF10 3NQ It would be helpful if the subject title of your email or letter included the words “Representation on Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water’s draft WRMP”. After receiving all your comments we will publish a ‘Statement of Response’ which will outline how we will take your comments into account in our final Water Resource Management Plan which we hope to publish by December 2013. The issues covered in our Plan will have a fundamental impact on our ability to maintain water supplies to our customers at an affordable price in the years ahead, while minimising our impact on Wales’s high quality water environment. I urge you to contribute to the debate and so help us make the right choices. Tony Harrington Director of Environment Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water Page | ii Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water dWRMP 2013 Executive Report Executive Summary Introduction One of our most important responsibilities, as provided for under the Water Industry Act 1991, is to ensure that Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water can always meet the reasonable water needs of our customers now and into the future. We produce an updated Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) every five years which demonstrates how we will balance the supply and the demand for water from our customers over the subsequent 25 years. As part of this process we are publishing this draft WRMP for public consultation. When this consultation process is complete we will submit our final Plan to the Welsh Government together with any modifications made, in the light of the comments received. Once directed by the Welsh Government thereafter, our Plan will be published and will come into effect on 1 April 2015. This draft WRMP covers the period up to 2040, and follows the guidance set out by the Welsh Government for such Plans. Our aim is to maintain water supply as efficiently as possible in each of the 24 Water Resource Zones (WRZ) we operate, so that water bills are no higher than they need to be, and the impact on our environment is both understood and minimised. In order to develop the Plan, we have projected the future demand for water from our domestic and business customers in each WRZ and we have calculated how much will be available from current sources. Where there is a shortfall, we have looked at all the ways of increasing supply and/or reducing demand, such as improving water efficiency to save water, to arrive at the best overall package of solutions for our customers, the economy and the environment. Over the last 20 years or so the quantity of water we supply to our customers has reduced in a ‘normal’ year from an average of over 1000 million litres per day (Ml/d) to about 800 Ml/day today, with about half of this reduction down to reduced leakage the rest due to reduced demand from heavy industry. Wales has plenty of rain: we estimate that Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water’s infrastructure captures only some 3% of the effective rainfall, leaving some 97% for the environment, compared to the South East of England where up to 50% is used for public water supply. Our supplies are almost entirely made up from upland reservoir and river sources, which are inherently ‘flashy’ and can both dry out and refill in a few months when compared to those ground water sources in England which typically drain slower but also take longer to refill. On the face of it then, we should not have a water resources problem in Wales. However, during this time the requirements of a variety of new environmental obligations, such as the European Water Framework Directive and the Habitats Directive have driven new and much tighter environmental standards which effectively require this water to be left in our rivers for the environment. These Directives have required the Environment Agency (now Natural Resources Wales – NRW) to reassess the impacts of our abstractions in a process known as the ‘Review of Consents’. To protect the environment and ensure compliance with these Directives, Natural Resources Wales has to make sure that all abstractions, including non water company abstractions, do not adversely impact on the environment, including specific protected plant and animal species. Over this period we have also gained a much better understanding of climate change, our environment, our assets and our own ability to meet customer demands going forward. The effect of Page | iii Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water dWRMP 2013 Executive Report the Agency’s review and our better understanding essentially reduces available water at peak demand times in a dry year 1; it does not significantly affect the amount of water we have available in a normal year. This Plan forecasts demand for water from our customers over the coming 25 years based on the Welsh Government and local authority projections of population and development growth. This assumes no major upturn in the demand for water from heavy industry, other than a small number of specific developments such as the Wylfa B Nuclear Power station proposals. We are reviewing our forecasts for industrial and commercial demand in light of the latest data available and specifically how we anticipate this will change over the next few years in particular. We have included both the possible demands of Wylfa B and industrial demand scenarios which illustrate a range of outcomes for sustainable development in this Plan. If during the consultation period for this Plan better data becomes available for either of these matters, we will notify the Welsh Government and issue an addendum to the Plan if required. We will reflect these findings within our final Plan to ensure that this contains the best and most up to data available. Taking all these changes into effect is what our WRMP does, with the overall aim of guaranteeing to our customers that the frequency of water restrictions are not more than once in every 20 years on average, for a temporary use ban, and not more than once every 40 years on average, for Drought Orders/Permits. The approach we adopt is conservative so as to ensure we can continue to supply our customers in the driest of years whilst at the same time minimising our impact on the environment. In summary, our Plan assesses our capability to continue to meet customers’ demand in an extreme set of circumstances, and assesses where we could have shortfalls over the next 25 years. Significant issues affecting the Plan In preparing this Plan we have taken account of a range of issues, however there are two particularly significant issues which impact on water resource availability. These are: Most impactful of all, is the result of Natural Resources Wales ‘Review of Consents’ exercise, undertaken in the light of the European Habitats Directive. A significant feature of this process is that, at designated sites, the ‘precautionary principle’ is applied, so a potential adverse impact of abstraction is presumed unless evidence is available to the contrary, which typically is not the case; and Secondly, (but less impactful) an updated assessment of the possible impact of climate change on the water environment in Wales, as set out in the latest UK Climate Change Projections published in 2009 (“UKCP09”), which may both reduce the amount of water we have available to supply, and increase demand from our customers. Together, these two requirements significantly reduce, or eliminate, our water resource surpluses in some zones, even creating deficits that could require significant investment to address. Natural Resources Wales’s ‘Review of Consents’ process will reduce our Deployable Output (DO) - the water we can make available to customers - in the water resource zone which supplies the South East 1 A “Dry Year” is defined as a year that is characterised by low rainfall and unconstrained demand.