One of our key aims is to leave the environment in a better state than today so it can be enjoyed for generations to come.
A key part of that is to not over abstracting water from rivers and aquifers as well as breaching licensed or permits.
Our target during 2020/21 was to have zero breaches.
How have we performed?
Short commentary
We had 69 breaches during the 2020/21 reporting year:
- 17 were environmental discharge consent breaches which we self-reported to the Environment Agency. These breaches were minor events and relate to process water from our clean water treatment works discharging into the environment or waterways.
- 18 (with the potential for a further four) were incidents relating to treated clean water burst water mains discharging water to the local environment. As soon as we were aware of these incidents we self-reported to the Environment Agency.
- 52 incidents relate to daily (50) and annual (2) abstraction licence breaches where we extracted more water from the environment than we were licensed to.
None of the breaches caused a long term impact and measures are in place to mitigate or prevent future events.
