The Alternative Options

We believe that Southern Water should be investigating, prioritising and investing in other more environmentally friendly solutions that work with climate change, not against it.

Since this is a detailed page covering a number of alternative solutions/ topics, the following table of contents might help you home in on a particular area of interest or concern. Click the headings to move to the relevant content.

Alternatives to effluent recycling

More challenging targets for leakage and mains renewal

Over the last five years Southern Water has only replaced 0.1% per annum of water mains. This shocking statistic means that a water main is unrealistically expected to last for 1000 years, which is ridiculous. They will never get the appalling level of leakage under control unless they dramatically improve their performance on mains replacement, as any future action on leakage will be undermined by the ongoing deterioration of water mains. The statistics below speak for themselves and demonstrate a clear lack of commitment to addressing leakage.

SW lose 100 million litres of water every day to leaks, that is 19% of all the water they abstract from the environment, which customers pay to treat, wasted through leakage in their distribution system.  In 2022/23 their operational target for leakage was missed and their performance on leakage was worse than the previous year.  Their slow programme for improvements means even by 2050 they will still be leaking about 10% of all the water they treat, including the new water manufactured at huge cost from their planned new effluent recycling schemes. Without a more ambitious mains replacement programme they will never get leakage under control.

An industry leakage specialist tells us that if Southern Water prioritised and funded leakage reduction they could strive to achieve a 50% reduction by 2040 and a 70% reduction by 2050, rather than the 53% leakage reduction target they have set themselves by 2050.

In addition to educating domestic customers to use water more wisely, water companies also need to do more proactive work with non-household customers such as schools, community buildings, shops and businesses to reduce their consumption. For example, fitting more water efficient taps and cisterns, and utilising rain water collection when drinking water is not required.

[Return to Contents]

Storing water in winter when river levels are high

In Hampshire we get plenty of rainfall and our rivers flood in the winter. The climate models tell us that we will get wetter winters and more extreme flooding events. Southern Water should be taking action now to design and implement schemes that collect and store that additional rain water for the longer drier summers that are predicted.  This will then have the further benefit of reducing flood risk to our communities. Alternatives that should be pursued include collecting water in winter when river levels are high and storing it in confined aquifers or winter storage reservoirs.

[Return to Contents]

Using confined aquifers for storage of excess winter rainfall

Where aquifers are confined, excess winter rainfall could be collected and stored underground until it is needed in dry summers. When underground the water would not be subject to evaporation losses. This solution is used in many countries around the world, including in California, USA. There are a number of confined aquifers across our region that could be topped up in the winter. The volume of each scheme would be relatively small, but if a number of schemes were developed together, they could make a significant contribution at times of drought. The infrastructure needed would be comparatively small and the daily operational costs over a year would be low.  Schemes could be developed in confined aquifers across the region closer to where the water is needed, reducing the energy and carbon costs of moving water, and only moving / treating the water when it is actually needed.

Sadly, there has been inadequate investigation of Aquifer Storage Options by Southern Water. Incredibly no Managed Aquifer Recharge Schemes (MARS) are selected in the period 2025 to 2035 in the Southern Water or Regional Plans. Instead, potential aquifer storage schemes have been ‘parked’ by Southern Water for further consideration in 2029, by which time if the effluent recycling scheme has been allowed to progress, they will not get properly investigated at all.

Only three schemes are selected across the entire region from 2035 to 2075, with just one selected in the Hampshire and Sussex area. Aquifer storage solutions should be cheaper and quicker to develop than effluent recycling, as it requires less infrastructure. Given the lower cost to construct and operate, lower environmental impact, customer preference for aquifer storage (which is seen as a more natural solution), aquifer storage options should be considered first, before effluent recycling, or at least investigated and developed side-by-side in a twin-track approach.

For example; the Test MARS scheme should be brought forward. This aquifer storage scheme has been included in the Southern Water and Water Resources South East (WRSE) Regional Plans for delivery in 2035/6. Why is this environmentally friendly scheme that could be protecting the internationally renowned River Test much sooner not been brought forward as quickly as possible?

– Southern Water already have the treatment infrastructure in place.
– Southern Water already own the land needed for the scheme.
– The scheme would use excess river water in winter, which could help to reduce flood risk, providing multiple benefits.
– It must be cheaper to develop, only requiring the construction of five boreholes, interconnecting pipework and pumps.
– It is located exactly where the water is needed close to Southampton.
– The aquifer can be topped up in winter and used to augment supplies in the summer reducing the need for river abstraction in the summer, and potentially stopping the need for drought orders more quickly.
– The company Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) screening indicated that the aquifer is deeply confined and there are no pathways to impact European protected sites.
– The company HRA screening indicated that up to 15 Ml/day could be provided by the scheme, yet the Southern Water public reports only refer to the scheme delivering 5.5 Ml/day.
– The original Southern Water 2022 option fact file (Annex 13 ) indicated it will take six years to investigate, this seems excessive, but the scheme could still be available in 2030 to help protect the River Test from summer drought abstraction if it were selected and developed now.

Further proactive investigation and trial pumping for the Test aquifer storage scheme should be commenced immediately as part of WRMP24, with the target date for delivery no later than 2030. This could help to plug the shortfall in water supply predicted for the period 2025 to 2035 in a drought.

[Return to Contents]

Developing new reservoirs for storage of excess winter rainfall

There are very few reservoirs available to store excess winter water in Hampshire and West Sussex compared to other parts of the country. There is an urgent need to investigate and develop new winter storage reservoirs, to provide storage opportunities to capture the excess winter rainfall that climate models tell us we will be getting. The new reservoirs could be located close to the rivers to avoid the need for long pipelines and pumping costs which require a lot of energy and carbon throughout their operational life. If designed appropriately such new water bodies could provide biodiversity benefits to help offset any initial environmental impacts of construction.

For example; The River Adur new offline reservoir –  Southern Water are planning a new storage reservoir which would be filled in winter with water from the River Adur which could supply 19.5Ml/day. Southern Water’s own customer research has shown a preference for more natural solutions including reservoirs, rather than effluent recycling, as reservoirs are seen as providing multiple benefits to society.

This new reservoir is not scheduled to be delivered until 2045. However, a Southern Water Technical Note confirmed (Section 7.4.4) that it could be selected for 2041. Why can reservoirs like this not be proactively investigated and delivered sooner?

A number of reservoir solutions could be located around the region, as close as possible to where the water is actually needed. Which would be a much more sustainable and sensible solution than pumping water 40km from Havant to Otterbourne. Previous potential reservoir sites identified by studies in the 1960s that would take excess winter water from the River Hamble and River Wallington should be reconsidered along with any other suitable sites.

Water companies should also work with farmers to help develop local winter storage solutions that would reduce demand on the public supply in a dry summers, and help to reduce abstraction from rivers when it is most damaging.

[Return to Contents]

Moving river abstractions closer to the tidal limit

If existing river abstraction points were moved closer to the tidal limit this would have an immediate environmental benefit, allowing freshwater to stay in the river for longer.

This solution is supported by a former Managing Director from Southern Water. He has written to Defra condemning the proposal to move to effluent recycling indicating the proposals in the plan are a serious mistake. Instead, he has proposed simply moving existing river abstractions (including on the River Itchen) to the tidal limit, allowing the water to stay in the freshwater environment for the longest time possible. A solution that would allow reduced upper catchment abstractions, allowing immediate environmental improvements and the recovery of the rivers that everyone seeks.

For example, moving the Otterbourne abstraction on the River Itchen should be investigated as a priority. If the Southern Water Otterbourne abstraction were moved close to the tidal limit, this could immediately protect 12km of the River Itchen and the Itchen Navigation from damaging summer abstraction.

The infrastructure required would be small and a pipe could be constructed in a 9km tunnel to carry water from the new abstraction point to the Otterbourne WTW to ensure there was no significant impact on the River Itchen.

[Return to Contents]

Transferring water from areas where there is an excess supply

A further alternative is to transfer water via existing water courses in areas where there is an excess of water. For example, Severn Trent Water has proposed a scheme to transfer water via the Grand Union Canal to the South East of England. This has been identified by the water company as having a number of environmental and recreational benefits.

There was also a scheme which would have involved transferring 16Ml/day of spring water stored in a reservoir from Bristol Water via north Dorset to Southern Water’s Testwood Water Treatment Works at times of drought. Southern Water rejected this scheme because it could not be delivered by 2027, but neither can the Budds Farm/ Havant Thicket Reservoir Water Recycling transfer. As a result Bristol Water made alternative arrangements to provide the water to Wessex Water.

[Return to Contents]

Progressive delivery, starting with a short/medium term strategy and a twin track approach

Southern Water does not need to deliver all of its predicted demand increase in Hampshire with one solution, a number of smaller environmentally friendly solutions could be developed to meet the short and medium term need. However, Southern Water have chosen to plan for a scheme that can deliver 60Ml/day or more in one go. This is driving the selection of effluent recycling.

Other potential alternative water resource schemes have been rejected at an early stage by Southern Water on the basis that they cannot be delivered by 2027, but then nor can effluent recycling which is selected and cannot be delivered until 2035. Southern Water also rejected schemes because they could not deliver, or be expanded at a later date, to deliver 60Ml/day to meet a 1 in 500 drought event. However, one scheme in isolation does not need to meet this high figure, a number of smaller schemes could be developed in parallel to deliver the required increase in demand and this is likely to provide a more sustainable and energy efficient solution. It could also be cheaper for customers providing better value for customers and the environment.

Why do we need to plan for a 1 in 500 year drought (allowing for extra capacity of 60Ml/day) all in one scheme now, when more environmentally friendly solutions could be found and delivered in a more phased approach?

The 1 in 500 planning scenario is only coming forward in emerging policy guidance to the water industry, it is not yet a mandatory requirement for plan delivery at this point (with the priority rightly being to reduce the use of drought permits in sensitive areas) so there is time to look for better more phased environmentally friendly solutions. There is a danger with the current planning philosophy that we end up with a white elephant such as the Thames Desalination plant, which uses similar high energy technologies, which is too expensive to run to produce drinking water, but they have to run it every day to keep the membranes sweet using energy, carbon and chemicals, when Thames Water really just wanted to shut it down.

Do we need to develop a solution for a 1 in 500 year drought now?

Why are we not educating consumers to expect to have restrictions on what water they can expect to have available to use in a 1 in 500 year very extreme drought? Having restrictions, or the threat of restrictions, helps to educate consumers as to the true value of water to their family’s health and everyday lives. Ask yourself, do you want your water bill increased now to pay for something that may not be needed in your lifetime, your children’s or grandchildren’s lifetime? Would you support paying for such an expensive and environmentally unfriendly solution now, or just prefer to accept the risk that for ‘X’ weeks at some point you may have to restrict your water use at home or work? While in the meantime Southern Water could be investigating and developing more environmentally friendly solutions. If the water recycling plant is built to meet the needs of a 1 in 500 year drought, it may be redundant and have to be replaced before it is actually needed in such a severe situation. In the meantime, customers will be paying for the very expensive infrastructure needed and the operational costs (as well as the environmental cost) to treat and pump 30 Ml of water every day of the year to keep the membrane plant and pipelines ‘sweet’. That’s 12 Olympic size swimming pools every day!

[Return to Contents]

Developing a twin-track approach

A more sensible solution would be to continue planning and developing an effluent recycling solution for the medium to long-term, but to start urgently proactively investigating and developing more sustainable solutions which have currently been ‘parked’ pending later investigation or been rejected. These include;

• Moving the Otterbourne abstraction close to the tidal limit to protect over 12km of the internationally important River Itchen, especially during a drought.
• Storage of excess winter water in confined aquifers. Prioritising the investigation of all potential options and trialling winter storage for those with the greatest chance of success to determine potential yields.
• Bringing forward winter storage reservoir schemes as quickly as possible, including the River Adur scheme. While also undertaking a more robust review to find other potential winter storage reservoir sites, including those which could store water from the River Hamble and River Wallington.

These more sustainable solutions should be proactively investigated and developed now, to ensure that all potential solutions to meet our water supply needs going forward are developed, before the need to resort to such a costly and unsustainable solution as effluent recycling.

Noting that you can build three reservoirs the size of the Havant Thicket Reservoir (cost £350 million) for the same cost as the proposed Southern Water effluent recycling scheme (minimum £1.2 billion with costs spiralling).

Holding back on the construction of an effluent recycling plant could enable time for better treatment technologies to be developed, that use less energy, enabling a more sustainable water recycling solution to be brought forward in time.

[Return to Contents]

Diverting industrial supply to public supply

Diverting water which Southern Water currently supply to a large industrial complex near Southampton to the public water supply at times of drought, and instead provide the industrial process with an alternative supply, for example recycled effluent.

[Return to Contents]

Water resource management planning

Adopt environmentally focused water resource management planning now

A key concern is that Southern Water do not want to deliver smaller localised environmentally friendly solutions, as larger schemes requiring more infrastructure provide better profit margins. The way the industry is currently funded encourages water companies to look for solutions that require a lot of infrastructure (treatment works, pipelines and pumping stations), as that puts assets on their books and allows them to justify larger water bills to Ofwat (their financial regulator) to build and maintain those assets over the next 70 years. Ofwat have recognised that this is a problem and after 2024 it is hoped that there will be a new funding mechanism to try and help drive more environmentally friendly schemes which have multiple benefits to society. It seems likely that Southern Water want to push through a very large infrastructure scheme before the funding mechanism changes.

Southern Water do not have a good track record on forward planning. They rejected including the sustainable spring fed Havant Thicket Reservoir in their plan for more than ten years, claiming that it could not be delivered. They have already wasted five years pursuing desalination at Fawley which is now rejected on environmental grounds, when it should have been clear from the off-set that this was not an environmentally acceptable solution. Multiple stakeholders certainly pointed this out to Southern Water before they selected the desalination scheme at Fawley. Now they are proposing effluent recycling which utilises a similar reverse osmosis technology to desalination, so it still uses huge amounts of energy, carbon and chemical, it still produces an enriched brine waste stream that must be pumped out to sea. Their main argument for selecting effluent recycling is that given the time they have wasted on the non-viable desalination scheme, no other solution can now be delivered in time to meet the need!

• How long should customers continue to be expected to pay the price of Southern Water’s poor planning?

• Instead, we should be responding to Southern Water’s consultation encouraging them to think again and take a much more sustainable approach to their water resource management planning?

Now is the time for us to be asking Southern Water to step back, to properly investigate and deliver more environmentally friendly solutions which work with climate change, not against it.

[Return to Contents]

Better alternatives if effluent recycling cannot be avoided

If there were really no option other than effluent recycling (which we think is unlikely), then there are other options that could be developed which are more sustainable than the option being promoted by Southern Water, which uses the Havant Thicket Reservoir as an environmental buffer lake. For example, recycling effluent from a sewage works closer to where the water is needed in Southampton and Winchester. One such option is to recycle effluent from Peel Common sewage works near Fareham.

Recycle effluent from Peel Common sewage works

Rather than treat final effluent from Budds Farm at Havant and pump it 40km to Otterbourne there would be many benefits to placing a water recycling plant close to the Peel Common Sewage works, where Southern Water could recycle at least 15 Ml/day. Unfortunately Southern Water have advised that work on progressing this alternative option was paused in May 2023, despite Ofwat confirming funding was available to explore and develop this as a back-up option.

A Peel Common scheme would have many benefits over the Budds Farm recycling scheme, including:

• Shorter pipelines would be needed from Peel Common STW to get the water to where it is needed in Southampton, with less construction cost, as well as less carbon and energy costs during construction and operation to pump the water.
• Southern Water acknowledge in their own reports that there is more environmental benefit delivered by siting a scheme at Peel Common, notably in relation to change in use of the long sea outfall there, rather than via the Budds Farm/ Eastney long sea outfall.
• You can potentially avoid the need for an environmental buffer lake altogether because the Peel Common STW does not have the salt problem that Budds Farm STW has and as a result the recycled water could meet the discharge criteria for a river. For example, this means that the recycled water could be discharged to the River Hamble or River Wallington, with an equivalent volume being extracted downstream at times of drought, with no adverse impact on river flow. As the river is in constant flow there would be less risk associated with bioaccumulation. Consumers would then still be drinking river water.
• There is plenty of land close to Peel Common where the Water Recycling Plant could be located. This would completely remove the significant risk to Langstone Harbour of building the plant on the dilute and disperse landfill site at Broadmarsh in Havant. There is more suitable land available close to Peel Common STW and north of Fareham to accommodate the larger footprint needed for future expansion.
• The pipeline route options look potentially easier from Peel Common STW alongside the Stubbington by-pass, as it is less urban, and there is no need to impact the South Downs National Park.
• Looking ahead, by the time this additional capacity is actually needed there may be more environmentally friendly treatment technologies and trenchless tunnelling techniques available to reduce the environmental impacts even further.
• There would still be the option of treating effluent from Peel Common STW and discharging it to a bespoke environmental buffer lake (Southern Water Option B5) if the Environment Agency are not prepared to consent discharge of recycled effluent into a river.

Note 1: Southern Water did have a Peel Common recycling scheme in their draft Water Resources Management Plan, but seem to have rejected it because it could not deliver 60Ml/day. But it does not need to. There just needs to be the capacity to expand to meet that need in the future if it is required. This could be achieved by adding a later pipeline from Budds Farm to Peel Common to increase the recycling plants capacity. Instead, they have proposed pumping Peel Common Effluent east from Fareham to Havant, to treat it in Havant, then to pump it back west again towards Otterbourne. That is madness!

Note 2: Southern Water say their best value plan gives overall benefit to their customers and wider environment, if this is what they are striving to achieve, then why are Southern Water not prioritising the Peel Common option first, ahead of Budds Farm?

Or better still investigating and pursuing more environmentally sustainable solutions that work with climate change, not against it.

[Return to Contents]

Discharging recycled effluent to underground aquifers

A further option that could be considered if recycling effluent has to be pursued by Southern Water, would be to treat effluent to meet the drinking water standards and then discharge the recycled water into underground aquifer(s) which have a long retention time. Rather than building a dedicated environmental buffer lake, or discharging the recycled effluent into the Havant Thicket Reservoir, where the potential adverse impacts on the reservoir and downstream Langstone Harbour are raising significant concerns. 

In drought stricken parts of the world where effluent recycling is used, storing the water in underground aquifers for long periods before use is the more established solution.  

Southern Water have provided a list of eight drought-stricken regions of the world where effluent recycling is used to supply drinking water. Just five use the Reverse Osmosis treatment process proposed for Havant, only one of which discharges the treated water to a storage reservoir, instead many schemes discharge to an underground aquifer with a long retention time. Given this experience in other parts of the world, if effluent recycling must go ahead in Hampshire, why does the water need to be discharged into the unique chalk spring water fed Havant Thicket reservoir? Why cannot it not be discharged into an aquifer much nearer to where the water is actually needed? This would remove the significant concerns about the impact of discharging recycled effluent into the reservoir, which Southern Water have confirmed they have not fully investigated/ modelled.

It is worth noting that the case studies from drought-stricken areas of the world which use effluent recycling stress the need to have stringent controls over what is discharged into the sewer by local industries.

• Do the water company have adequate control over what is discharged into the sewers in South Hampshire (Portsmouth, Havant and so on)?
• Southern Water have confirmed that they have no plans to introduce additional controls to reduce industrial/ commercial discharges into the sewers before they press ahead with effluent recycling.

[Return to Contents]

[Last updated, 10-11-2024]