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Providing continuous high quality drinking water At a glance
Scottish Water customers are receiving the highest ever level of drinking water quality thanks to significant investment. But we need to do more to ensure we meet our statutory obligations in future. That’s why we want to improve water quality even further while ensuring every customer can always receive a safe and reliable supply of drinking water. Our strategy to improve water quality: Scottish Water will monitor and maintain its network to provide high quality drinking water. We will work to protect our water sources from pollution and, where necessary, invest in new treatment works and pipes to meet statutory drinking water standards, to improve the look and taste of water and address the challenge of climate change. Our strategy to supply water whenever and wherever it is required: The challenges of climate change and population growth may increase the likelihood of a long term (more than a week) interruption to customers’ water supply. We will take steps to ensure that all customers, regardless of where they live, are always able to turn on their taps and receive the best possible water. Improving long term resilience could be achieved by importing water using road tankers in extreme circumstances and creating new links between supply systems for larger communities. This will help ensure we can always provide our customers with water if there is a problem with their normal supply.
Scottish Water
Key Current supply Future network
Scottish Water is developing better links between our water treatment works to enhance the resilience of water supply to our customers’ properties. We will work to reduce water leaks from our pipes and encourage customers to use water wisely – recognising that water is a precious resource.
Introduction Chief Executive’s statement
Providing continuous high quality drinking water
Protecting and enhancing the environment
Supporting Scotland’s economy and communities
Investing in future water services
25
About Scottish Water What might the future bring? Listening to our customers Our strategy
Most customers trust that they will always have a safe and reliable supply of water that tastes and looks good and supports the use of modern appliances. We aim to deliver this service for all our customers across Scotland every day, meeting the challenges of climate change and population growth, and embracing new technology to deliver services in the most efficient way possible.
Drinking water quality Drinking water quality levels have improved significantly since 2002 and now achieve 99.88% compliance with regulatory standards as a consequence of significant investment in water treatment over the past 20 years. While there are no proposals for changes to the statutory drinking water standards that we must achieve, we can improve water quality further and enhance the look, taste and smell of some drinking water supplies. Challenges to drinking water quality fall into two categories: dealing with impurities that occur naturally in the environment from which source water is taken, and those that relate to maintaining the capability of our assets to continue to treat water to current high standards. In the future climate change may increasingly affect the quality and quantity of our source water supplies.
Drinking water availability We have reduced short term interruptions to water supply by two thirds over the past 10 years. This has been achieved through improved response to potential and actual interruptions, and our ongoing programme to replace ageing water pipes. In addition we have improved our support to our customers when these events happen, providing alternative water supplies and better information about what is happening to restore supplies. We have also reduced leakage in our water networks by around 40% which has helped us to meet growth in customer demand without additional investment in new treatment works.
We know that there are some events that can potentially cause a long term disruption to water supply. For instance in early 2010 our water sources were under pressure in parts of Dumfries and Galloway due to a prolonged period of dry weather. At the end of 2010 we experienced a challenge in keeping all of our treatment works operational because of exceptionally cold weather which also caused freezing of pipes. Elsewhere in the water industry, a 1995 drought in Yorkshire had significant implications for customers, while severe flooding at Tewkesbury in 2007 resulted in the loss of water supplies to around 160,000 homes for a week. Projected population growth and population movement in Scotland will increase pressure on some existing water supplies. This could require additional water to be taken from the environment and the construction of larger treatment works to meet customer demands in the east of Scotland. Potentially, this could leave us with a surplus of water supplies in the west.
Our strategy To achieve our strategic aim of providing continuous high quality drinking water in the most efficient way we must focus on: • Monitoring the risk to service; • Maintaining compliance; • Improving the resilience of supplies; • Working with others to manage demand on the water environment; and • Investing to improve services and compliance.
Strategic Projections
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Monitoring risk to service
Improving resilience of supplies
We are improving our operations by linking new monitoring systems to a central control system and weather data. This will allow us to proactively monitor performance of our assets and networks and take action or carry out repairs before there is any impact on services to our customers.
Resilience can be defined as the ability to maintain essential services under extreme circumstances. In many ways for water supply this can be considered as the ability to supply customers from an alternative supply. Our current estimates suggest that we have the capability to continue normal supplies in extreme events for around only 15% of our customers.
We use drinking water safety plans to understand and manage the underlying risks to public drinking water supplies, and to identify and implement measures to further improve drinking water quality. Using these plans we will identify and prioritise activities to move towards a proactive risk identification system so that customers never experience an avoidable water quality incident in the future. Looking at the future availability and demands on the water supply allows us to understand the potential challenges that we face in relation to the resilience of water supplies because of population and climate change. We can then consider a range of options to meet the challenges identified, such as managing demand, reducing leakage, educating on using water wisely, tankering water and investing in new assets or connectivity between supply systems.
Maintaining compliance Central to our strategy for providing high quality drinking water supplies is the ongoing operation and maintenance of our assets. We are forecasting increased asset maintenance as a consequence of investment in enhanced treatment works over the past 15 years to improve water quality. We will continue to develop our approach to ‘fail-safe’ operations – where if problems arise with our assets we minimise their impact on our ability to provide services – and ensure employees are suitably trained and deliver the best operational practices.
Many parts of Scotland are served by small water treatment works. In the event of localised water shortages or supply issues we can provide alternative supplies by tankering water by road from larger treatment works. However, the majority of our customers receive their water supply from larger water treatment works through pipe networks with limited or no connections to water supplies from further afield. Should any of these water supplies fail (for example due to flooding, freezing, or unforeseen equipment failure) or water resources diminish in quality or quantity; we would then face difficulties in providing water supplies to a significant number of customers. We have identified improved resilience of water supplies – to ensure the continuation of water supplies in challenging circumstances – as one of our key strategic priorities. Our customers have told us in their responses to ‘Your Views Count’ that avoiding interruptions to supply that last longer than a few days is a top priority for improvement. By installing additional links between water supply systems for major towns and cities, we can develop a more comprehensive water network to serve the main urban areas of Scotland. This will allow us to provide operational flexibility to meet future demand requirements and climate change impacts. A more comprehensive water network may also allow us to protect our environment by using water more flexibly. We estimate the cost of this to be in the order of £500 million to £750 million over the next 20 years, but require to do more work to confirm these costs.
2013 2015
2021
Engage customers Assess current service resilience Confirm and agree options Deliver agreed resilience improvements Scottish Water
2040
Introduction Chief Executive’s statement
Providing continuous high quality drinking water
Protecting and enhancing the environment
Supporting Scotland’s economy and communities
Investing in future water services
27
About Scottish Water What might the future bring? Listening to our customers Our strategy
Our predecessors had great foresight when in 1859 the Katrine water supply was built to serve Glasgow. Since then several regional water supply schemes were introduced to meet significant growth in industrial and domestic demand.
Current water supply links
Dundee Perth
Our plans for extending the water network will allow us to join up our water supply networks in the central belt to significantly increase the resilience of water supplies, and are illustrated by the yellow arrows on the diagram to the right. We expect to phase this development over the next 20 years, taking advantage of opportunities to reduce other investment to meet new demand. Customers in Aberdeen are largely served by water taken from the River Dee. To improve the resilience of supplies in the north east in the event of the loss of a water treatment works or water source pollution, we expect to develop a new upland storage reservoir and links that connect the water treatment works in this area. As we develop proposals and costs for this option we will compare these with the cost of connecting to supplies from Perth and Dundee.
Glasgow
Stirling Grangemouth Edinburgh
Ayr
Potential additional water supply links Elgin Turriff Peterhead Inverness Aberdeen
Working with others An important part of our strategy is to encourage everyone to use water wisely and consider how their behaviour and usage impacts on the water environment. While Scotland’s natural water resources are typically high quality, on occasion, substances such as pesticides, nitrates and colour can be found in water sources. Surface water run-off from land and farmland is often the cause of these impurities which can affect the quality of our raw water supplies. Working in partnership with the farming community and others to protect raw water sources by managing catchment areas has the potential to provide real, sustainable results for our customers across Scotland. We are currently working with various agencies to encourage customers to use water wisely, explaining the positive effect that using water wisely can have on their energy bills and the water environment. We are also piloting a variety of incentives and water efficiency measures for the home to understand the relative benefits and costs of these and how customers respond to them. The findings from this pilot will inform our ongoing water efficiency plan.
Dundee Perth Stirling Grangemouth Edinburgh Glasgow
Ayr
Katrine Scheme (1859) Carron Valley & Turret Scheme (1939-1961) Lomond Scheme (1971) Ayrshire Scheme (1950) Lanarkshire Scheme (1956) Edinburgh & Lothian Scheme (1905/1983) Inverness System Badentinan System Turriff System Forehill System Aberdeen System Potential Interconnection Schemes Alternative Raw W ater Source
Strategic Projections
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In addition to measures that will reduce demand there is significant potential to recycle water used in the home. For example, we will work with relevant industry stakeholders and organisations to encourage changes in bathroom fixtures and fittings and plumbing that will allow water used for showering and bathing to be reused for toilet flushing. We will encourage the use of water butts to capture rainwater to fill watering cans and wash cars. Such measures could reduce overall water demand by up to 30%, and therefore reduce the volumes of water taken from the environment and pumped through our water and sewer networks. We continue to look for ways to efficiently reduce leakage levels in our water networks and are working with industry to improve prevention and detection measures. We work with Licensed Providers to look at ways to reduce business customers’ demand for our water supplies in order to increase the resilience of our supplies and reduce the need for capital investment. This can create benefits for business customers through lower bills. We are also working with planning authorities and developers to encourage development in locations with existing capacity to supply water and waste water services, and to encourage more sustainable use of water and waste water in buildings. Typical use of water in the home Other (including drinking) Outdoor Toilet Washing up
7%
5% 31%
8%
14%
Clothes washing
13%
Showers Source: Waterwise
Scottish Water
22%
Baths and taps
Investing to improve services We will enhance our maintenance and operational activities, and invest in new treatment assets that reduce the risks identified through our drinking water safety plans to address impurities that occur naturally in the raw water environment. We will also invest to deal with the risks associated with the reduction in performance of our assets as they get older, as well as: • Providing enhanced water treatment processes to ensure the quality of drinking water will consistently exceed 99.9%; • Ongoing cleaning, and where appropriate, relining or replacing cast iron water mains to improve the look of drinking water; • Improving the operational control of water disinfection and seeking new disinfection techniques that ensure there are minimal taste and odour issues; • Understanding and responding to the effects of climate change on raw water quality; and • Seeking innovative technology and real-time monitoring of water quality in our networks. The majority of our future investment to improve drinking water services is to further improve drinking water quality and improve the look and taste of drinking water across Scotland. The other main area of investment is to increase the resilience of water supplies against long term interruptions by extending the water network.
Introduction Chair’s statement About Scottish Water What might the future bring? Listening to our customers Our strategy
Providing continuous high quality drinking water
Protecting and enhancing the environment
Supporting Scotland’s economy and communities
Investing in future water services