Water Resources East unveils £6bn plan to plug 25% supply gap

Water Resources East (WRE) has published a £6bn draft water resources plan for the east of England, to plug a projected 2050 supply gap of 600 million litres of water a day equating to a quarter of current water use.

This water deficit is being driven by population and economic growth, climate change, and the urgent need to take far less water from rivers and groundwater sources that are showing the effects of over-abstraction. WRE said water companies and farm businesses in some parts of the east may have to reduce their abstraction of water from current sources by more than 60% to help nature recover.

The multi-sector, best value, adaptive plan, created by the independent WRE, included:

• weighty demand reductions throughout the lifetime of the plan by households, public buildings, businesses and other sectors – households will on average need to use 20% less water per person than they do today, supported by universal metering, behaviour change campaigns, and new water efficiency policies from government;
  

• two major new reservoir systems in South Lincolnshire and the Cambridgeshire Fens, to store 100 billion litres of water, plus potentially a new winter storage reservoir in North Suffolk;
  

• greater movement of water around the region, importantly via Anglian Water’s new £300m strategic pipeline – with no new transfers of water out of the region, except an existing export to Affinity Water; and
  

• desalination plants on the coasts of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex; effluent reuse projects; and aquifer storage and recovery.

The plan is open to consultation until 20 February. WRE pointed out: "Unless action is taken, increasing water scarcity will constrain agricultural production and curtail economic and housing development, impacting the region’s future prosperity and endangering the east’s iconic chalk rivers, peatlands and wetlands.”

The other four regional water resource groups are all expected to publish their draft plans this week. The Water Resources South East (WRSE) plan will be available this afternoon https://www.wrse.org.uk/

Water companies will also be publishing their statutory Water Resource Management Plans over the coming weeks, which draw down from the regional plans.