WildFish responds to Southern Water’s unsatisfactory supply plans that fail to protect the environment

WildFish has today submitted its response to Southern Water’s revised draft Water Resource Management Plan which fails – yet again – to clearly explain how it will secure a high-quality, reliable water supply for customers in Southern England without harming the rivers it relies so heavily upon. 

Water Resource Management Plans (WRMP) set out how a water company intends to achieve a secure supply of water for its customers while protecting and enhancing the environment. Southern Water was forced to redo its original draft WRMP because it failed to deliver clear information about the deliverability of water supply, environment assessment and environment protection.

Disappointingly, the revised draft shows little improvement and is set to have potentially devastating impacts on the area’s rivers and its wild fish populations.

Our assessment of Southern Water’s revisions finds:

1. There is a lack of transparency in the consultation. The documents lack high-level figures to explain how predictions on supply, demand and deficit are made.

2. There is a lack of real commitment to long-term projects needed to ensure environmental protection from abstraction. For instance, the Water Recycling schemes and the use of the Havant Thicket Reservoir need to be brought forward with tighter time-frames. Southern Water should not be relying on taking water from the rivers and the aquifer.

3. There are no long-term “Plan B’s” in case the recycling and reservoir options are delayed or abandoned. This means a huge risk to important chalk streams and their wild fish populations.

5. The plan is not consistent with promises made by the water company to the Environment Agency in 2018 to use “all best endeavours” to bring forward long-term water resource schemes to avoid the use of damaging drought permits and orders.

6. The environmental assessments, which describe the impact of the water resource schemes, are full of errors. They do not properly consider the impacts of increased abstraction on the chalk streams and their aquifers.

7. The environmental assessments do not deal with the consequences of the Environment Agency’s conclusions that there is a salmon “metapopulation” of fish in the southern chalk streams.

Justin Neal, lawyer at WildFish, said: ““Southern Water was supposed to set out plans about how they were going to meet water demands without causing damage to the environment. But the current draft of the Water Resource Management is as full of holes as the leaky Southern Water infrastructure, with increased delays and ever-shifting targets and projects. They do not protect the freshwater environment and wild fish populations that only just manage to cling-on, in the face of over-abstraction”.

Southern Water’s draft WRMP is out for consultation until Wednesday 4 December.

Follow the link below to help us pile on the pressure and email Southern Water today with our demand to protect the environment or lose it. It only takes 30 seconds – we urge everyone who can to act now.

Supporting documents

Follow the links below to read our response to Southern Water in full.