Severn Trent publishes plan to tackle forecast deficit

Severn Trent has published its draft Water Resources Management Plan for consultation.The plan forecast a significant deficit between supply and demand for water. The company explained: “The key difference from our previous plans is the need to prevent the risk of future environmental deterioration, which is a fundamental requirement of the Water Framework Directive. This means that, in order to protect our environment for future customers, some of our current sources of water can not be relied upon in the future and we need to find alternative ways of meeting demand.”

Severn Trent plans to reduce abstraction from sources that have a detrimental environmental impact and ensure its future abstractions do not pose a risk of environmental deterioration.

In terms of managing demand, it earmarks leakage reduction, supporting customers to be more water efficient and increasing meter penetration. Among the other measures in the plan are: more trading; greater use of catchment measures to protect drinking water supply from pollution risks and to improve ecological resilience to low flows; increasing the flexibility of its supply system; and increasing/optimising deployable output from existing sustainable sources where possible.

The consultation runs to 14 May, with the final WRMP due in autumn.