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The 2011 reports (11/CL/08/2; 3 & 4) assessed the impact of climate change on source water quality & it’s implication for the treatment process.  They provided a framework for assessing potential risks & identified adaption responses.  However, climate change predictions have changed in the last 10 years & it’s effect is starting to become better understood.

As the effect of climate change starts to increasingly impact the UK, algae is becoming more prevalent with different ecosystem pressures resulting in different algae being present & requiring removal e.g. MIB, Geosmin, toxins, etc.

There are many pre-treatment offerings, but issues also occur through process clogging channels & blacking launders.  Filtration rates & sludge systems can also be impacted.

Climate change is an undeniable threat to the water sector as a whole. We have already experienced a +1°C change in average temperatures above pre-industrial levels, with more change already 'baked in; as a result of  we can expect the UK climate to continue to warm and move to dryer summers / wetter winters irrespective of which emissions pathway we follow.

The focus of much of the recent work has been on the effects of sufficiency (water resource impacts) demand (more water consumption) and storm frequency / rainfall volumes and the impact on surface water flooding (a key component of the drainage and waste water management plans).

There is a gap with regard to information in respect to the wider effects of a warming climate. For example the effects on catchment land, algal activity, impounding reservoir behaviour, the effects on river water quality and how these factors may or may not increase treatment intensity or possibly require alternative treatment technologies to be deployed, and how warmer raw waters and ambient temperatures may impact current treatment technology e.g. coagulant performance and persistence of chlorine.

New requirements placed on water companies in England and Wales at the latest price review, from both the economic and quality regulators, have required companies to prepare long term plans against a range of likely climate change scenarios linked the UKCP forecasts, while only currently a requirement in England and Wales there is an obvious benefit to all UK water companies developing such plans.

This project aims to close the identified gaps in the current application of climate change pathways, developing a common approach to assessing the impacts that is capable of taking account of the local and regional variations in climate change forecast.

To determine whether any emerging contaminants, measured through the Chemical Investigation Programme, pose a potential risk to the quality of drinking water supplies.

Problem

The Chemical Investigation Programme (CIP) Phase 1 &2 has monitored a large number of chemicals that may be entering the aquatic environment from our wastewater treatment processes.  This data, however, has not been looked at in terms of the potential impacts on drinking water quality.

Impact

We currently do not know the impact that these chemicals have on raw water quality for sources located downstream of a waste water treatment works.

Project

This project is an enabler for future work to meet the outcome “An appropriate balance of risk with regards to substances of concern, their public health impact, and mitigation”. It is the first project in a series that will allow the Industry to demonstrate to its customers and other stakeholders, including regulators, that it keeps the upstream risks it faces under review as data becomes available.  Subsequent projects will look in more detail on issues such as treatability i.e. determine if the disinfection process for water containing these chemicals give rise to unwanted by-products of health concern or cause taste and odour issues.

Problem
Drinking water quality is of key importance to public health. The current systems of delivering safe water to consumers in the UK is based upon significant investment in infrastructure and performs at an excellent standard at a very low cost.  However, the ongoing and future challenges of climate change, net zero carbon, population growth and aging infrastructure mean that traditional ways of providing safe water may need to change. 

To support the innovation needs in drinking water quality there is a requirement to consider and implement catchments as the first stage of treatment including nature based, sustainable solutions in addition to behavioural changes within catchment owners / users to drive improvements in water quality and offset the need for infrastructure investment. The latter is well developed through current catchment management approaches / techniques however there is less experience on using catchments as a treatment stage particularly for more diffuse sources of water quality parameters that cannot be readily addressed at their source/point of origin. This proposal looks to advance the research into catchments as a treatment stage to supplement the already well developed and implemented catchment management approaches within the UK and Ireland that successfully reduce the input of compounds into source waters.

The following are just some examples of where there is a need to consider and develop catchment based solutions as a first stage of treatment to close the current knowledge gap:
•    With climate change more water companies are experiencing taste and odour events linked to algal growth within source waters. Catchment characteristics and activities can contribute to this and often require additional infrastructure to be installed at Water Treatment Works.  
•    Organic carbon in source waters can be heavily influenced by catchment characteristics and activities and the main. Although many water companies undertake peatland restoration and other catchment management activities many WTWs now have (or will require) advanced treatment process to remove the organic carbon to minimise formation of disinfection by-products.  These processes can be energy intensive and expensive to operate and maintain.  There is a need to consider ways to allow more DOC processing to occur before entering source water bodies. 
•    Dissolved metals in source water bodies can also lead to requirements for additional treatment processes. 
•    With the recast Drinking Water Directive additional parameters are being added to regulations with another two being added to a watch list. Of particular importance are emerging pollutants and the impact of personal care products on water quality. This strengthens the need to fully explore and utilise catchments as the first stage of treatment to offset investment in infrastructure in line with the net zero emissions targets. 

There is also a need to use catchments to provide early warnings to water utilities on issues that may impact on treatment and resultant water quality rather than the WTW instrumentation and performance picking up on a water quality event. The use of online monitoring (of water quality and weather) can provide improved intelligence to support the implementation of catchments as treatment stages. 

Like research on traditional catchment management, research on catchments as a first stage of treatment is a challenging area as often options are specific to locations. Despite this there is a need to identify and assess opportunities for utilising catchments as the first stage of treatment calling out what would need to be assessed prior to implementation in specific catchments. Previous research including the Freedom project has shown that in surface water systems some water bodies act as a net source of organic carbon, and therefore reduce the overall benefits of catchment interventions such as peatland restoration. Therefore research in to catchments as the first stage of treatment needs to holistically consider the catchment system (catchment and water body). 

Building on previous UKWIR Research into remote sensing for catchment management (15/DW/14/12) and other modelling and mapping techniques there are opportunities to utilise these techniques to identify areas where catchments as a treatment stage are likely to deliver the greatest benefits. 

There is a need to: 
•    Identify suitable catchment-based treatment stages and how these can be implemented and the expected performance for the different types of catchments across the UK and Ireland. 
•    Determine where catchments as the first stage of treatment will offer improved source water quality, support the drive to 100% compliance and provide overall value to customers. 
•    Take a holistic view of the catchment system (e.g. combination of catchment and water body) to ensure that full benefits of catchment based interventions are realised. 
•    Identify how catchment based treatment stages will be maintained and protected without loss of biodiversity or public amenity value. 
•    Understand impact of climate change on catchments – need to develop resilient processes. 
•    Create a decision support tool to enable Water Utilities to identify opportunities for implementing catchments as the first stage of treatment, expected performance and value and benefits. 
•    Understand the interface with the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) and equivalent across the UK and Ireland.  

Impact
Unless we can utilise catchments as the first stage of treatment there will continue to be a need for investment in WTW infrastructure to provide 100% compliant water by 2050 and this will potentially hinder the progress to achieve net zero. 
If we can fully understand catchments as a treatment stage, we can look to offset infrastructure investment, offset carbon emissions and improve biodiversity in catchments. This will also help ensure a resilient water system for the next few decades and beyond. 

Project
Such a project could be supported via WIRe CDT or similar, looking at defining catchment based treatment stages, the impact of different catchment-based processes, development of decision support tool to facilitate identification of opportunities to implement catchments as the first stage of treatment and assess the potential value and benefits. 

The project will improve our understanding of utilising catchments as the first stage of treatment using more sustainable processes and may help support a future transition to chemical free water treatment.  

The water treatment regulations are ever tightening in the UK sector, not only with respect to regulatory wholesomeness but also aesthetics (taste and odour) and more importantly customer acceptability.

Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) is already deployed widely in the UK water treatment industry. Often deployed for the removal of pesticides from raw water and increasingly as a method of removing taste and odour compounds.

GAC has the potential to be deployed for the removal of emerging contaminants such as PFAS and pharmaceutical compounds, and treatment of deteriorating raw water quality.

Regeneration of GAC is expensive and GHG emission intensive - with more being deployed, and for a greater range of issues regeneration needs are likely to increase in capacity and frequency.

Given the likely increase in the deployment of GAC how does the industry / regeneration companies ensure that sufficient capacity is available in the UK, with sufficient effectiveness at a sustainable cost while not damaging the sectors Net Zero ambitions.

In 2016, UKWIR commissioned a thorough review of knowledge across all areas that, at the time, were considered to be potential threats to the UK Water Industry reaching the BQ04 vision of achieving 100% drinking water compliance. A global literature review was complemented by extensive stakeholder engagement to set the scope of the study, to collate relevant knowledge and, most importantly, to tap into the insights of industry subject matter experts to best understand the likely risk posed by any identified gaps in knowledge. This valuable work has served to shape the BQ04 programme since then, helping to structure the research into a logical and deliverable project, with a clear strategic direction.

However, the world has changed surprisingly quickly over the last six years: the water industry is now facing calls for action in areas that were not identified as significant risks in the initial work, for example micro plastics, micro fibres, and PFAS/PFOS. Such contaminants, whether scientifically warranted or not, are high on the agenda of not only water quality regulators, but also the environmental lobby, the media and thus the public and politicians.

The world has also moved on in terms of the collective knowledge around the risks that were identified at the time, not least thanks to UKWIR’s efforts. It is now the right time to revisit this work, to update our knowledge with the latest research in this area, and to evaluate how the BQ04 programme is helping to address some of the gaps in knowledge identified in the original research.

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This project will address key issues in order to meet the outcome “Ownership and responsibility for water quality is clear and all part their part in its protection”. The project will improve our understanding of the complex chemistry which underlies the control of lead solubility.  Recent developments in analytical instrumentation open up a number of avenues to enhance the industry's understanding of the surface chemistry which facilitates compliance or causes failure.

Problem

Ingress into contact tanks and treated water tanks is a one of the major causes of bacteriological failures, and represent a potential risk to public health. Currently, there is no standard suite of tests that can be used by water companies to identify points of ingress into tanks.  This results in internal inspections that may fail to locate a point of ingress and cause: no action to be taken; or precautionary remedial work, such as overbanding, which does not address the root cause of the failure/risk.

Impact

This project will help water companies avoid regulatory failures and the associated CRI penalties. In addition, the project will improve the effectiveness of tank inspections and avoid the need for precautionary remedial work that may not be linked to the water quality issues. The cost of overbanding a typical distribution reservoir will be >£250k.   

Project

The project will survey water companies inside the UK, and other countries if they are regarded as leaders in this field. The surveys will determine what techniques they use to identify ingress and what techniques they use to confirm/pinpoint the location of the ingress.

This information will be used to develop a best practice guidance for monitoring/inspection techniques; and how they should be applied to deliver the best result/resolution of likely points of ingress. For example:

• What monitoring and data manipulation is required to detect a deterioration in water quality due to ingress?
• What is the optimal depth of water and saturation time required for flood testing?
• What preparation and resolution of camera is required for thermal imaging techniques.

The second phase of the project will be to undertake a literature survey that determines techniques used r being developed in other sectors/academia that could be applicable to the detection of ingress in a live environment or during a tank inspection. The results of this survey will be used to highlight promising techniques should be prioritised for trials/further development for use in the water industry.

Project Outputs

• A report that details the range of techniques used in the water industry to identify tanks at risk due to ingress, and the techniques used to confirm the presence/absence of ingress during tank inspection. The report will provide best practice guidance as to the most effective techniques and how they should be applied to ensure their maximum effectiveness.
• A survey and evaluation of monitoring techniques from other sectors/academia, that are in use or under development, that could be used to monitor for ingress and/or locate points of ingress. The report will provide a summarising the findings – including recommendations as to which novel techniques should be priorities for future investigation.

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A significant proportion of surface water is treated by means of direct filtration. While catchment management solutions have, and continue to be deployed, there is still an observable trend in most raw water systems of continued deterioration.

For works that don't already have clarification processes in place, new process stages may need to be retro-fitted. For sites that already have clarification stages a greater reliance of more coagulant dosing or supplementary coagulants such as PAC may be required.

Traditional clarification processes require significant land to deploy, and are energy and chemically intensive. This could limit retrofit deployment at existing works and be counter effective in meeting Net Zero ambitions.

For water treatment more generally there can be an over reliance on chemicals in the sector (especially for flocculation requirements). These chemicals can be expensive to buy, vulnerable to supply chain disruption, subject to competition from other industrial sectors, and subject to price volatility. Exposing water companies to interdependent resilience concerns.

Ever tightening WQ standards and deteriorating raw WQ are likely to drive retrofit clarification stages and greater chemical consumption to meet standards.

Alternative solutions to water treatment (including clarification) need to be understood and evaluated that serve to reduce or completely remove the dependency on chemicals for water treatment.

If we are to halve our abstractions by 2050 water treatment plant efficiencies will need to be improved. At present industry best practice dictates that wash water return flow is maintained at less than 10 % by volume and with a turbidity of less than 10 NTU. However, with the improved treatment technology over the past two decades are these limits still a reflection of the risk of cryptosporidium oocyst breakthrough or can these limits be risk based on treatment technologies and incoming water quality.