THE MAGAZINE FOR THE DRAINAGE, WATER & WASTEWATER INDUSTRIES
MAIN FEATURE
Swale photo courtesy Polypipe
concentrate on maintaining and operating our key assets.”
So, although the Environment Agency has huge responsibilities for where our water goes, it needs the support of many others to make it all work: from local councils to farmers to specialist businesses, drainage contractors and, ultimately, householders.
completing key operational actions to protect people and property. We were operating pump stations to maintain conveyance, closing flood gates and installing stop logs to hold water back. All the while we were on patrols 24 hours a day checking our assets. During this period technology helped us to manage our resources efficiently. We were able to remotely monitor our automated debris screens, such as the River Leen syphon, and confirm they were operating as required.
“We could also use our CCTV images to check for blockages to our screens and direct our operations teams to clear them only when required. We cleared urban debris from one screen that could have caused a serious blockage. At the same time we could confirm our other screens were clear and didn’t require attendance, which reduces our carbon footprint from driving between sites and allows our team to
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Here’s an example of how housebuilders can help. The Home Builders Federation has said that water efficient new build homes can not only save their occupiers money (around £126 per year) but also use up to 40 litres less water per day, due to more efficient taps, showers and toilets. THE HBF claims that from the 240,000 new homes built last year, almost 8.5 billion litres of water were saved. One hopes that permeable paving and other mitigation measures for extreme water events were also incorporated into these new homes. It’s all very well saving water, but we also urgently need to deal with more water coming down on us and distributing it carefully to reduce flooding.
And it’s not just the Environment Agency trying to protect us from excess water; other companies in this industry are trying to ensure that all that water doesn’t pollute, either.
A view from the industry
Jo Bradley of Stormwater Shepherds UK has this to say about where the water
goes: “When it rains, people give little thought to where the stormwater goes once it has disappeared down the drain; they probably don’t give it a second thought. But stormwater pollution from urban surfaces is one of the biggest sources of river pollution across the UK, and it overwhelms our urban sewers too, causing them to overflow too often. Stormwater from roads, car parks, factories and offices carries with it a cocktail of pollutants, many of which are toxic to the creatures that live in the rivers. Every time it rains, these chemicals from our tyres, our exhaust pipes, our lorries and our factories wash into stormwater drains and into rivers, streams, canals and estuaries. This stormwater is the largest terrestrial source of microplastic tyre wear particles entering our seas and oceans and it is estimated that 63,000 tonnes of tyre wear particles come off British roads every year. Research has shown that blue whales consume up to 1billion microplastic particles over a feeding season with as- yet-unknown impacts on health, and other marine creatures are known to be harmed by the particles too. Closer to home, in our rivers and streams, the toxic pollutants in highway runoff cause harm to the insects living there, causing mutations and affecting their behaviour
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