SUSTAINABILITY
Minister: now it’s time for change
Delegates to a water industry event about sustainability and the value of water in Belfast in March heard first-hand how the Government, the Utility Regulator and Northern Ireland Water intend to deliver for the future. WWT editor Natasha Wiseman opened the event and reports on the day
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orthern Ireland Minister for Regional Development, Conor Murphy, is proposing changes to the way
water and sewerage services are managed in Northern Ireland. Speaking at the Water NI 2011 conference on sustainability in Belfast, the Minister said that he would be providing a paper to the Northern Ireland Executive, “so that an incoming Executive will have a look at the whole way NIW [Northern Ireland Water] is set up”.
Also speaking at the conference, hosted by
WWT on 16 March, were Shane Lynch, the chief executive of the NI Utility Regulator and NIW chief executive, Trevor Haslett.
Lynch said that since moving from energy to take up his cross-sector post, he has been struck by the lack of incentives to improve efficiency in water industry regulation. He said that Northern Ireland might need to push back and challenge directives coming out of the EU.
“We cannot be directive takers, we have to kick back, negotiate and challenge,” he urged. Lynch also asked for a move towards localised solutions, saying that the utility should copy practices from elsewhere, but “only if they work well for Northern Ireland.”
Project design Haslett told the 100-plus assembled delegates that the best efficiencies were achieved at the design stage of any project. He explained that the utility was moving away from small land area footprint schemes that were costly and energy intensive to operate, and towards more localised, sustainable, approaches incorporating technologies like reedbeds.
He outlined the potential of maximising NIW’s sludge digestion plants for combined heat and power (CHP) and said that the company has a target to recycle 75% of excavation material.
38 Water & Wastewater Treatment April 2011 Service delivery
Aston also defended the drive for efficiencies in Northern Ireland Water, she said that doing things “smarter” has improved service delivery: “We want to look at making sure we are getting the best value out of whatever we capital spend we have,” she said.
NIW’s director of asset management, George Butler, provided a detailed background on the government-owned utility and the particular challenges posed by climate change and the Water Framework Directive. He said that he favoured a move towards a catchment-based approach to water and wastewater quality. Butler identified the need to take account of diffuse pollution from farming and combined sewer overflows in considering wastewater treatment options: “That is a far more sustainable approach than setting discharge standards or end-of-pipe solutions,” he said. A flexible approach to engineering solutions was also proposed by Dave Foster, director of environmental protection NI Environment Agency. “The regulator’s got to be flexible, with engineers taking a flexible approach as well, and looking at those solutions that might not be the shiniest engineering solutions, but might actually be more sustainable.” Speaking for the Consumer Council, Antoinette McKeown said that sustainability
The director of water regulation for the Utility Regulator, Jo Aston, said that much stronger partnerships were needed between the regulators, the utility and other stakeholders. She said that improvements to meet water quality and wastewater discharge compliance in the region were welcome, but echoed Lynch in questioning the logic of a significant increase in capital expenditure to meet EU directives. “While we are driving up the quality, what are we doing to our carbon footprint?” she asked.
New proposals: Conor Murphy makes his point
could not be divorced from the straitened financial landscape facing consumers. “Consumers struggle to understand what is sustainability and sustainable growth; they require simple, easily understandable information regarding the different financial and environmental costs of different consumption choices,” she said.
Innovation
Providing comparison with NI, David Tyler, senior engineer for the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, gave a thorough review of how Scotland was moving towards a more sustainable strategy. He said that moving towards a flexible approach to consenting was desirable. He also listed measures such as Scottish Water’s £20M climate change mitigation strategy and the successful spin-out of commercial efficiency outfit Business Stream, as useful ways in which Scotland was driving its green agenda forward.
Continuing the theme, delegates heard an inspirational presentation from Charles Ainger, visiting professor in engineering design for sustainable development at Cambridge University. He challenged the presumption that sustainability is expensive: “It should save money, “ he said, urging a move away from “pump and treat” solutions.
Rounding off the event, he urged NI to take action on innovation and sustainability, sharing a favourite quote from the 17th-century French scientist and innovator, Blaise Pascal, who said, “People find it easier to act their way into a new way of thinking, than to think their way into a new way of acting.“ nnn
A DVD of Water NI 2011 is being produced, to register interest in the DVD or future events in Northern Ireland, please email
nicola.smith@
fav-house.com
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