Wastewater Monitoring and Analysis
Why it’s smart to increase your sewer network monitoring Effectively managing hundreds of thousands of miles of sewer network is an unenviable task. And with ever-changing industry regulation, stricter statutory targets, additional compliance and a growing abundance of technology, that task could easily be regarded as insurmountable. How can you ever know exactly what’s going on throughout your entire network? It’s impossible. Or is it? Dave Walker, co-founder of Detectronic, investigates. Expert supplier support and solutions are now widely available to enable every water company to achieve and exceed this challenging task and it all starts with the decision to increase existing sewer network monitoring. The aim is to always be one step ahead and, ultimately, be in a position where you actually understand the entire DNA of your sewer network.
Prevention is better than cure
As defined by the Water Industry Act, 1991, the duties of a water and sewage company (WASC) in relation to wastewater services are: to provide, improve and extend a system of public sewers, and to cleanse and maintain them to ensure its area is effectively drained; and to make provision for emptying its sewers and the treatment of sewage. Having had three decades to get to grips with these duties, several WASCs have forged ahead after realising they can effectively meet their duties AND comply with stringent regulatory measures and targets by implementing smart network monitoring. Having strategic monitoring and predictive analytics in place is enabling them to identify any issues before they arise. The old adage – “prevention is better than cure” – is now broadly accepted by the UK water industry. But there is, as always, room for improvement! And, when we take into account the constantly evolving regulatory and compliance landscape, continual improvement is ‘de rigeur’. It is one of the reasons, alongside the constant need to achieve cost-savings, that we have been
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encouraging water companies to increase their sewer network monitoring for many years.
Meeting regulatory and industry compliance
Established in 1989 following the privatisation of the water and sewage industry in the UK, Ofwat is the non-ministerial organisation tasked with regulating the water sector. One focus of Ofwat is the long-term stewardship of the environment, assets and relationships with customers. As such, along with Government statutes and mandates, Ofwat sets specific regulations, measures and targets that water companies must adhere to and meet in order to avoid financial penalties and, as a consequence, commercial and reputational damage. As you would expect, these are all under constant scrutiny and subject to regular review. For example, back in March, the Government introduced legal measures to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows in a bid to reduce the harm to the environment. Storm overflows play a key role in preventing the sewer network from becoming overburdened with sewage and rainfall in the event of wet weather. They provide a release for diluted wastewater in rivers. Unfortunately, the reliance on storm overflows has increased in the last few years as a result of an increased number of annual rainfall events and a wastewater infrastructure that is being overwhelmed by an escalating population. Forming part of a wider agenda to build a greener environment following the pandemic,
these measures demand that water companies reduce their dependence on storm overflows. As such, the Government hopes this will translate in a dramatic reduction in the levels of sewage in UK waterways over the longterm. Part of the measures place a clear duty on WASCs to publish data on their annual storm overflow operations. They must also work closely with the Storm Overflows Taskforce which was established in September 2020 to bring key stakeholders together to ensure progress. As part of this Taskforce, they have had to commit to increasing the number of overflows they will improve on in the next five years. An additional 800 overflows will be investigated and almost 800 improved between 2020 and 2025. And it’s not just statutory bodies that are holding WASCs to account. Surfers Against Sewage are just one of a number of environmental organisations that are gaining increasing public support for their demands for stricter targets and increased transparency in relation to rivers and bathing water. Sympathy for this cause only increases when we read headlines like those back in July outlining that a UK water company had received a record fine of £90 million from the Environment Agency after pleading guilty to 6,971 unpermitted sewage discharges. The shortcomings of the UK water industry are still many and varied but there is at least one clear and proven way to prevent pollutions for good and improve performance at the same time and that is by increasing sewer network monitoring.
WATER INDUSTRY JOURNAL DECEMBER 2021
