Southern ditches desalination and pursues water recycling for Hampshire

Southern Water has ditched desalination in favour of water recycling and water transfers as it continues to assesses options for its fraught Hampshire supply area, where regulatory abstraction reductions from the Test and Itchen chalk streams leave the company with a significant shortfall of water should there be a drought.

The decision follows a detailed and collaborative appraisal taking in the viability and potential impacts of lots of options which could be pursued alongside demand management and leakage reduction, and the agreed transfer from Portsmouth Water’s new Havant Thicket reservoir. These included desalination; several different configurations of water recycling; and a new pipeline to transport more water from Havant Thicket.

Southern said water recycling and transfers came out as preferable, particularly when impacts on the environment were considered. Advanced treatment techniques, including ultra-filtration, turn what was previously regarded as wastewater for return to the environment into drinking water to be kept in the supply network. Southern Water is running a pilot at its Peel Common Wastewater Treatment Works in Gosport as part of its investigations into the water recycling process.

The company will now progress further investigations of the remaining options ahead of its next submission to regulators in December, 2021, where it will select its preferred solution. It will then carry out further engagement and consultation, and start the planning process.