Environmental efforts have resulted in very effective wastewater and sewage treatment, hence cleaner beaches and rivers too, but there are still a few challenges to be faced.
Whether you believe in global warming and climate change or not, it is happening, and this means more of the extreme temperatures on both ends of the scale as well as more floods and droughts. Severe droughts and extreme rainfall has led to both an excess and a shortage of water, often at the same time, and this is not good news.
Challenges to the UK Water Sector over the Next Decade
The world is still experiencing a population explosion, which means more houses and more people to supply with water; the UK population alone is expected to rise by around 10 million by 2030 and by another 10 million by the 2050s.
This, together with stricter environmental laws and standards means that even higher standards of water treatment and better maintained sewer networks will be called for. Waste and wastewater management will become a priority, as will the recycling of wastewater and the protection of coastal and river water. Currently approximately 16 billion litres of wastewater passes through 624,200km of sewers and 9,000 wastewater treatment plants daily.
With the UK currently generating around 15,000 tonnes of sludge annually, the recycling or disposal of sludge will need to be closely monitored with the rising population numbers and everything that goes with that.
Public water supply sources are adversely affected by agriculture, especially in terms of high levels of pesticides and nitrates in the water, and the water industry is taking a new approach, that of catchment, to deal with water treatment more effectively and more economically.
Other practices such as sewer misuse needs to be monitored and addressed, as must adaptation to climate change, reducing the industry’s carbon footprint, and methods of reducing the industry’s energy use by employing more renewable energy such as hydro, solar and wind, and generating biogas from the anaerobic digestion of sludge.
At this stage the water industry seems to be well on track with their 25-year water resource management plans (WRMPs) covering the period 2015-2040, so things are looking good for UK water.
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