Here is a summary of the issues discussed in these talks.
We face multiple challenges regarding water. Chaotic global weather now impacts us all from the national, through to the regional and down to the domestic. It’s easy to forget about floods when we have droughts and vice versa. Too much or too little and not at the right time or in the right place. There’s now no such thing as ‘waste water’; there are shortages somewhere. This series of talks takes a deeper look at this important issue.
Water in the Landscape
The first talk was given by Dave Rumble, Chief Executive of the charity Wessex Rivers Trust. He is especially interested in large-scale, integrated approaches to environmental challenges and so called nature-based solutions where ecological restoration and climate action interlink. This talk covered the watery landscape of our local catchment, where the chalk aquifer and its streams are of national and even international importance. These act like a sponge slowly discharging to aquifers. It can take 40 years for water falling as rain here to emerge, so with the pollution falling today we are storing up problems far into the future. Rivers need enough flow – but not too much. Now some of our chalk head streams periodically dry out with extremes of low and high flood that are disastrous for wildlife. Dave said the limit of ‘sustainable’ extraction is 100l/person/day but the average is currently twice that. Rivers also need to be clean – but even ‘clean’ sewage can contain invisible pollutants not removed by the process, including microplastics, pharmaceuticals and nitrates and phosphates from agriculture. Rivers need to provide a natural habitat – which means NOT tidying up, straightening or reinforcing banks with concrete or brick. or dredging. Dave also talked about restoration strategies, a point taken up in the second talk.
Water in the Garden
This talk was given by Kevin Bryan, a research ecologist who has seen first hand the impacts of changing weather patterns across the world over the past 40 years. The UK is not immune to these changes. Kevin’s current interests include conservation at local and ‘small plot’ levels, including within gardens. This embraces gardening for wildlife and ‘micro’ rewilding. The issues we face are both water shortage and water scarcity, which means addressing water storage and retention. At landscape levels, some districts use schemes to lessen the impacts of chaotic weather, especially flooding, such as ‘Natural Flow Management’. In Yorkshire, for example, this includes the Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) and, specifically, ‘Slow the Flow’ programmes in Calderdale, which covers the Hebden Bridge area. Schemes for drought management can be much more complex. Kevin discussed how ‘nature-based’ solutions can be applied at the garden level, to manage gardens and other small plots for periods of both excessive rain and insufficient water. Techniques include rainfall storage (eg the water but) and addition of ‘sponge points’ in gardens to soak up excess rain – the latter are areas of accumulated biomass, eg. by mulching, that absorb water. Kevin also talked about grey water – water with soaps and detergents which can damage plants, animals and fungi and destabilise soils, so must be used with care. Kevin has found grey water can be ‘cleaned’ by leaving it in a tank with gravel or soil at the bottom, which is better for the garden than using it ‘fresh.’ Excessive water can be addressed with storage and technique to attenuate the flow, such as the ‘leaky water butts’ Souther Water is trialling on the Isle of Wight. Kevin warned of unwanted side effects – for example a tank installed at Southampton University to catch flood water now releases it straight to streams, which means it is bypassing the Valley Gardens whose trees are now showing alarming effects of drought.
Water in the Home
The third talk was given by Adrian Pickering, a retired engineer with experience in both the private sector and in academia. He is also the owner of a nationally-registered ‘SuperHome’ where he has implemented a range of solutions to reduce environmental impact. These include the use of well water for toilet flushing and rainwater for washing machine. (See also our blog on fitting a rain water flushing system, by a member who was inspired by Adrian’s example.) Simple water saving techniques like collecting shower water for the toilet or garden watering can reduce domestic water use. The more complex methods can reduce it a lot more. The largest usage of water entering the home is for toilet flushing – an embarrassing waste of drinking quality water. Properties built in the last 20 years should send storm water to from roofs etc to a soakaway, not to waste water pipes (where it adds volume in storms, resulting in releases of sewage into rivers.) If you can prove your storm water doesn’t go into the waste pipes you should receive a reduction in the ‘waste water’ part of your bill. If you reduce the water you use (eg by fitting a rain water flush) you will also reduce your waste water bill, as water companies are required to treat this as 92% of your metered usage. Adrian noted that 25% of UK water losses are due to leaks before it reaches the customer.
Water in everything, Everywhere
The final talk was given by Angela Cotton, Co-Chair of Transition Southampton. This talk looked at ‘virtual water’ which makes up some 90% of the water we use and is embedded in everyday food and goods. Some crops require much more water than others, and some products (notably electronics) use a lot of water in their manufacture. Water drawn in one place to grow crops or manufacture goods electronics is effectively being transported to the importing country, and is a particular problem where the exporting country (such as China or India) is already water-stressed. Globally, fresh water is increasingly an over-extracted resource, leading to problems such as drought and land subsidence, impacting on livelihoods and food production. Recently scientists have discovered the so much ground water has been extracted from underneath the planet that it has shifted its rotation! If we don’t rein in our water use, we risk major shortages and water-related wars.