Parts of England at risk of running out of water last year, official files show
UK environment regulator warned government that companies were nearing ‘potential immediate supply risks’
Water companies risked running out of supplies in some parts of England during the heatwave last summer, according to official documents that will add to concerns about their investment in infrastructure.
The Environment Agency warned of “potential immediate supply risks” in Yorkshire and the South West in September 2022, according to internal memos shared between the UK government and the regulator, and obtained by campaign group Greenpeace.
The briefing papers, released under freedom of information requests, showed water levels in some reservoirs across the country hit record lows and were close to “dead storage”, where there is so little water it may not be treatable.
Almost half of England’s reservoirs had levels classed as “exceptionally low”. Greenpeace said the shortages meant companies were forced to abstract from rivers and lakes at unsustainable levels.
The documents will fuel concerns that a failure by the UK’s privatised water companies to invest adequately in infrastructure will leave the country dangerously exposed to supply shortages during future heatwaves.
About one-fifth of treated water supplies is lost in leaks, according to water regulator Ofwat, while no new reservoirs have been built in more than three decades.
The concerns about water shortages come alongside mounting public pressure over the sewage outflows that have closed beaches this and last summer.
Megan Corton Scott, political campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the government and water companies were taking a “dangerous gamble” over the risk of drought.
“With leaky infrastructure wasting up to 1tn litres of water a year and no new reservoirs built for decades, climate change could bring severe water shortages to the UK — and once again this government and water companies are playing fast and loose with the future of the country,” she said.
Water companies were expected to submit 26 drought permits to help secure supplies, according to a letter sent by the Environment Agency to a senior government official on September 14 2022.
Drought permits are an emergency measure that allow companies to increase abstraction levels but they put pressure on the environment by draining the aquifer, rivers and lakes.
Not all the permits were submitted or activated, but the Environment Agency granted South West Water a drought permit to abstract more water from the Lower Tamar lake, a nature reserve on the border of Devon and Cornwall.
In the documents, the Environment Agency warned that, without the permit, the reservoir linked to the reserve would have emptied and “become unusable”. South West Water, which supplies water to 1.7mn customers in Devon and Cornwall, might have had to start using tanker trucks and bottled water to maintain supplies to customers, it added.
Pennon, which owns South West Water, said “no customer went without supply or impact to the quality of supply due to the drought.
“We reacted well and we continue to review all plans regularly to prepare for any future climate change impacts to water resilience. South West Water strongly disagree with any suggestion that it had not adequately prepared for the risk of a drought.”
In July 2022, Southern Water applied for a drought permit so that it could continue taking water from the River Test, a rare chalk stream that was receding amid record temperatures last year.
The Environment Agency could not approve it under the habitats directive — which protects fish and other species — because Southern Water had not accounted for the impact on salmon in the river.
The agency said it was concerned that Southern Water — which serves about 5mn people in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight — “may illegally abstract to maintain customer supplies”, a situation that could pose “serious environmental risks”.
Southern Water said that it “applied for a drought permit and did everything we could to reduce demand and protect the rivers”. “In the event, levels on the river never dropped below the hands off flow, no drought permit was needed and we withdrew our application,” it said.
The company added that it was “carrying out the largest ever UK water resources scheme involving building the first reservoir in 25 years, widespread adoption of water recycling, increased grid resilience”.
Yorkshire Water said that “despite experiencing one of the most extreme drought events and highest temperatures ever recorded, there were no interruptions to customers’ supplies and our reservoirs were able to refill over the autumn and winter”.
The government and Environment Agency were contacted for comment.