In order to deliver the required improvements to progressively reduce the adverse impact of storm overflows as detailed in the Environment Act, opportunities to treat overflows need to be further explored including their application, costs and benefits.  

The mass deployment of low-cost level sewer monitors is underway across the UK, with companies installing 10,000’s of permanent new sewer monitors.

WASCs will be network data rich for the first time. This advancement will present significant opportunities to improve the speed and accuracy of decision making, planning, design, and modelling approaches.

Public demand for water quality information is at an all-time high. Recreation water quality research has advanced with more data captured, widespread EDMs deployment, improved instrumentation quality & availability, and more advanced analysis particularly with the use of AI to understand and predict water quality (Warleigh Weir in Bath being a good example).

There is an opportunity to improve the information communicated for bathing water quality and to provide more in-depth information to users on what is impacting the water quality and how storm overflow discharges are shown in this context.

The EA currently provide a Pollution Risk Forecast (PRF) for designated coastal bathing waters. It is a statistical based approach designed a number of years ago it relies on a relatively small data set (BW samples May-Sept). https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/help-understanding-data.html

Current there is inconsistency across public facing platforms for example Southern Water provide 24 & 72 hours impact warnings, Surfers Against Sewage provide a 48hour warning, the EA provide a 72 hour pollution risk forecast. The general public and recreation water users are losing trust particularly in WASCs and in the quality of the water, impacting local tourism and economy.

Currently the application of climate change to the DWMP and to LTDS has been carried out differently by companies. 

Companies require tools that take the UKCP18 climate model outputs and convert them into usable factors that can be applied within hydraulic models.  REDup has been created to enable the risk from climate change to be applied to hydraulic models.

The current REDUP tool provides information based on climate Projection RCP8.5.  Government guidance and regulatory requirements are now requesting evidence from Modelling to include Climate Projections for all climate scenarios.  Companies are being asked to produce this information with many more time horizons. The outputs of the tool need to consider how the data can be interpolated between years and whether the tool is capable of carrying out multiple year interpolation as well.

The tool also can produce outputs that are equally statistically valid for the same request.  Additional supporting information is required to explain this to our regulators.

We need a tool to comply with the current regulatory and statutory requirements and we need to work with our regulators during this project to capture any additional expectations for delivery as part of DWMP29 and PR29.

We need to prepare the tool to provide factors for more epochs that will allow us to react more quickly to direction from government through the planning process.

The project objective will be providing a ‘risk-based’ charging system for all FOOD SERVICE ESTABLISHMENTS (FSE’s – that include hospitality, commercial, restaurant and foodservice [both takeaway and seated]) kitchens based on the risk from FOG (fat, oil & grease + foodwaste) in the wastewater discharges from those FSE kitchens.

Ofwat to support the ‘risk based’ wastewater charging scheme in accepting that ALL kitchens that provide food in individual portions for consumption on or off the premises, will discharge wastewater that contains FOG & foodwaste. Currently FSE’s are billed in same way as domestic households, where there is an assumption that 92.5% of the clean water registered through the water meter is returned to the sewer as wastewater. No account is taken of the ‘risk’ to the public sewer from the content of that wastewater and consequently only the FSE’s that create blockages are considered a risk under Section 111 Water Industry Act 1991. In reality all FSE’s discharge FOG and billing based on that risk to the sewer and sewerage wholesaler operations.

FSE kitchen discharges are considered to be legally classified as  ‘trade effluent’, but to manage and enforce them as ‘full trade effluent’ customers would be logistically, physically and financially infeasible.
This project seeks to provide an alternative ‘half-way-house’ approach of a risk-based charging system that treats all FSE’s equally, regardless of their discharge location and size.
The FSE’s should be required to pay wastewater charges commensurate with their risk to sewerage wholesaler operations. If the risk is mitigated using certified grease management systems and supported by certified contractors for cleaning and maintenance, the cost of that risk is reduced.

The project objective would be to propose and recommend suitable FSE tariffs and appropriate percentage risk factors for FSE charging i.e., should the FSE with no grease management be charged 100% more (i.e., double the wastewater charges), but this charge can be mitigated back towards the normal 92.5% of the clean water used (by volume) by fitting effective and efficient grease management, recovering the maximum amount of FOG. The emphasis would then be placed on the ‘producer (polluter) pays’ as extended producer responsibility to drive behaviour change. This then supports the circular economy, zero pollution by 2040 and no CSO use.

There are several methods recognised to detect infiltration (CCTV, Electroscan etc) but all appear to have shortcomings that prevent them being as effective as is needed. Infiltration seems to be an intractable problem for several companies in the south of England (and others to a lesser extent) and can only be remedied where measurable (short of wholesale replacement/relining).

This suggestion is to engage with universities/academia to suggest and pilot alternative technologies

Currently the application of climate change to the DWMP and to LTDS has been carried out differently by companies. 

Companies require tools that take the UKCP18 climate model outputs and convert them into usable factors that can be applied within hydraulic models. REDup has been created to enable the risk from climate change to be applied to hydraulic models.

The current REDUP tool provides information based on climate Projection RCP8.5. Government guidance and regulatory requirements are now requesting evidence from Modelling to include Climate Projections for all climate scenarios. Companies are being asked to produce this information with many more time horizons. The outputs of the tool need to consider how the data can be interpolated between years and whether the tool is capable of carrying out multiple year interpolation as well.

The tool also can produce outputs that are equally statistically valid for the same request. Additional supporting information is required to explain this to our regulators.

We need a tool to comply with the current regulatory and statutory requirements and we need to work with our regulators during this project to capture any additional expectations for delivery as part of DWMP29 and PR29.

We need to prepare the tool to provide factors for more epochs that will allow us to react more quickly to direction from government through the planning process.