The Climate Change Act 2008 requires us to report on our plans to adapt to a changing climate. Our response will detail:
- our risk assessment procedures
- overall levels of risk
- our plans for adapting to climate change impacts across all aspects of our business functions (Water, Wastewater and Support Services)
- specific projects from our business plan such as:
- our Sustainable Urban Drainage System retrofit project, a £1.3million investment to protect key assets from the increased risk of flooding
- our Water Resources Management plan
In the face of climate change we need to ensure that there is enough water to meet customer demand across the North West of England. To ensure we respond appropriately, we have produced a Water Resources Management Plan, which details how we intend to provide water for the next 25 years. We agreed the Plan with stakeholders and regulators in August 2009 after extensive consultation.
Projects already underway, such as the West-East Link pipeline between Merseyside and Manchester, will reduce the risk of water shortages across the region and ensure a robust supply network. Our continued focus on leakage and water efficiency programmes helps to reduce potential increased pressures on supplies. These programmes also help to reduce carbon emissions by reducing the volume of water that we need to treat and pump.
During the last ten years we have been working together with national policy makers to implement ways to tackle the challenges of drainage and flooding in urban areas. We have sought to identify the barriers and find ways to overcome these through regulatory and legislative changes. We have been active in terms of project delivery on every Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) pilot scheme for the past five years and have a long record of working with the Environment Agency and academia.
We are working with eight local authorities in the North West to help them develop surface water management plans that will look at more sustainable ways of managing surface water in these areas.
Climate change may mean that more properties need protecting against the risk of foul flooding from the sewerage network. We are working with our regulators to develop and implement a risk-based approach to managing flooding from our sewerage system. We are also working with local authorities to develop management plans for extreme events when the capacity of our sewer network is overwhelmed.
River flooding threatens many of our assets and climate change will inevitably increase this. We are already taking steps to protect our key assets as outlined in our business plan for the next five years. We will also undertaking further work to asses the impacts from long-term climate change.