Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
TUESDAY 6 JUNE 2000
MR MIKE
WALKER, DR
CHRIS SPRAY
AND MR
PAUL WOODCOCK
340. Would you not feel more responsive if you
were obliged to follow the code?
(Dr Spray) We are, in the sense that the code is recognised
in the first several sections of the Water Industry Act. As I
say, that part will be taken into account when the next licence
is done. The experience with the standing committee is that people
are following the code. I think the answer is that we are a very
customer-orientated business and we have realised—as I think
was mentioned earlier on—that the customer rates the environment
right at the top of the list of particular benefits they expect
from their water company. So in terms of delivering biodiversity,
it is an expected part of our business.
341. Do you have any information on whether
North West Water are following the code?
(Mr Walker) I can only speak on behalf of the industry,
and the industry follows the code of practice. It has been agreed
at a national level.
342. Will North West Water follow the code?
(Mr Walker) I am sure North West Water will follow
that code.
Mr Brake
343. Can I pick up on something Mr Woodcock
said? Mr Woodcock, you have said that Ofwat do not recognise the
need to spend on biodiversity, yet Mr Walker, in his response,
seemed to be suggesting that all the £7 billion that was
going to be spent was going to be spent on biodiversity. Mr Walker
was not able to be precise about how much was being spent currently,
but how much do you think needs to be spent on biodiversity? How
much should the Ofwat regulator recognise needs to be spent?
(Mr Woodcock) I do not think you can answer that question
in the way you are asking it, actually, because it is very difficult
to come up with figures straight off.
344. I am sorry, you made the point that it
does not recognise the need to spend on biodiversity.
(Mr Woodcock) I think if companies are moving forward
Biodiversity Action Plans, it does involve expenditure. In the
periodic review, that we have just been through, there has been
no specific allocation by Ofwat for taking forward biodiversity
plans. The point Mike was making, quite rightly, was that most
of the work that we are funded to do over the next five years
is going to be related to environmental improvement; about cleaning
up sewage effluents or mitigating the effects of abstraction,
for example. So there is quite a lot of money in there for general
environmental improvement which will improve biodiversity, undoubtedly,
but specifically in relation to biodiversity plans, there is not
any specific funding for that.
345. You do not know how much you would need,
anyway.
(Mr Woodcock) In Anglian Water we have a biodiversity
and heritage budget. We have spent £4.5 million since 1997
specifically on creating wildlife habitat and improving heritage
facilities in our region. I suspect, although I cannot say categorically,
that that level of expenditure will carry on into the future.
Mr Blunt
346. Anyone who has been on the receiving end
of the weather over the last two or three weeks probably has some
sympathy with the idea of climate change. With the importance
of climate to your business and certainly in the area of biodiversity—with
bits of the coastline being submerged by rising sea levels and
bits dropping into the sea through erosion and the rest—and
with potential variations in the amount of precipitation we are
going to get over future decades, how can the need to accommodate
all this future environmental change be incorporated into UK biodiversity
policy?
(Mr Walker) If I can talk generally about climate
change in the water industry, whilst the effects of climate change
are still unclear they are becoming clearer as we go on, and,
potentially, it is of crucial importance to the water industry,
not only on the water resources side, with increasing demand in
hot summers and less resources but, also, on the waste water side
and the way that our waste water systems operate, particularly
if we get increased storms which put pressure on sewage treatment
works and on storm overflows. In terms of biodiversity impacts,
I think Paul or Chris may have specific examples.
(Mr Woodcock) One of the constraints we have there
is that as climate change comes along we are not clear exactly
what the effects are going to be. In East Anglia it might be drier
summers and wetter winters, which will mean more storage. We have
a particular problem in relation to the Habitats Directive and
biodiversity at one of our reservoirs, Rutland Water. Rutland
Water was built in the 1970s and designated an SPA in the early
nineties, which means it is a Habitat Directive site, but we have
never exploited the full yield of the reservoir, which could be
important as climate change starts to bite. So we have still got
a third of the water to take from Rutland, which we have not in
the past—we have only exploited two-thirds. However, because
it is a Habitat Directive site and covered under the Habitat Directive
regulations, we are having to get involved, quite rightly, in
lots of appropriate environmental assessments before we can undertake
a project to exploit the remaining third of the water in that
reservoir. We are quite happy to undertake this environmental
assessment work, we think it is quite right, but the question
we have as an industry is when does overriding public interest
come into play in this respect? When do you bring in the aspect
of balancing public water supply with the needs of conservation
at a site like this, bearing in mind the difficulties that climate
change will bring?
347. Rutland Water is not exactly a small site.
(Mr Woodcock) It is a very big reservoir.
348. The consequences, presumably, of draining
it completely will be, in terms of the wildlife and biodiversity,
catastrophic for those species which have accumulated there over
the decades.
(Mr Woodcock) Absolutely.
349. Surely, the overwhelming public interest
is that the industry is in a position, if you know what is going
to happen or what could well happen with climate change over decades
to come, to take investment decisions to make sure you do not
have to drain Rutland Water.
(Mr Woodcock) I think the issue is the impact on the
species composition at the reservoir; we would not be draining
it completely, but there would be greater fluctuation. The consequences
of it are £200 million investment in another reservoir with
a 20-year planning horizon. That needs to be balanced against
the loss of biodiversity.
Chairman
350. With, presumably, the consequences that
you might lose biodiversity on the new reservoir site.
(Mr Woodcock) That is possible, yes. Conversely, we
might create biodiversity if we are creating a new reservoir,
which may then be designated a Habitat Directive site, which means
we cannot use it for water supply again. It is a difficult circle.
Mr Blunt
351. How vulnerable is the UK water supply in
terms of sensitivity analysis to changing climate? How significantly
does our climate have to change for our storage capacity to be
wholly inadequate?
(Dr Spray) That is an issue we are working on with
a lot of people round the country. Part of that is to look at
it in terms of risk analysis because we cannot tell you what the
answer is. What we know is that in the north west it looks far,
far better than it does in the south east, and in the south east
this debate of people versus wildlife—which is almost what
it is becoming - is becoming more and more of an issue. That is
why more concentration is going into the alternative demand management
effort. At the moment, as our sustainability indicators have shown,
we are looking okay; we are working forward to try and address
the balance and address the issue, as we can. One of our problems
is catching up with what has happened in the past, and this is
where the people/wildlife debate is actually catching up with
us. A good example would be not of a reservoir but of a bore hole
in East Anglia, where the Great Fen Raft Spider—which is
a European Protected Species—has one of its only two sites.
The headline in the local paper ran along the lines of Spiders
Win Over People, because we had to remove the bore hole to
protect the spider as part of this European protected site. The
problem was where did you then find an alternative bore hole that
was not contaminated with high nitrate levels to keep the local
population going? That is a major problem of resource; it is not
just throwing money at it, it is a pragmatic problem of wildlife
fighting with people for a limited resource. In many cases it
is actually the past catching up rather than planning scenarios
for the future. We can work with those.
Mr Donohoe
352. You mentioned earlier the biodiversity
champion schemes and some of the problems associated with it.
How do you see the Government invigorating that scheme?
(Mr Walker) That is something Paul has mentioned in
the Anglian evidence. I do not know if you want to expand on that.
(Mr Woodcock) I think, essentially, we do not see
the biodiversity champion process as having been very successful.
As I understand it of the 450 priority species only about 20 have
been taken up by business to champion. I think there are a number
of reasons for this. Essentially, we need a more structured approach
to the way in which the champions process works so that business
is more encouraged to take part. I think, possibly, we need to
do more to promote the scheme. Some of the water companies have
taken this on board wholeheartedly, and I think water companies
would be willing to act as champions to promote the scheme, and
take it forward into the future. I think in this we act for the
customer; we are the species champion for our customers, in many
ways.
353. So how do we re-launch it? How do you see
that being re-launched?
(Mr Woodcock) I think there are a number of ways to
do that. It may need another big public launch, taking those things
that have been successful in it so far forward as champions, creating
green clusters of industry to actually promote this in regional
areas.
(Dr Spray) I think the key element here is regionality,
and the link with sustainable development indicators that the
Government have produced—15 headline and 150 other ones.
They become a way of getting rid of one of the barriers, which
is that there are very few industries that are national that can
pick up a national species. However, on a regional basis, and
maybe using the 10 Regional Development Agencies around Britain,
we can tie in with the Government's wish to produce regional indicators
and English Nature's wish to produce regional biodiversity indicators.
That would be a framework which all industry can buy into and
you can get a much better response from individual industries.
354. What concerns do you have about the monitoring
process?
(Mr Woodcock) I think there is a disconnect, at the
moment, between the national steering group on biodiversity and
the regional players. In our region, in Anglian Water, there are
a number of county-based groups which push forward biodiversity
and steering group reform, and we are concerned that there is
not any structure in place to report back on progress against
biodiversity targets. What we have tried to do in Anglian Water
and I think other companies have been working on these things
as well—is to produce a biodiversity index. We are working
with English Nature, the RSPB and a range of other organisations
to produce an index whereby we can report on the biodiversity
of the landholding that we have and, by monitoring over years,
report on progress against biodiversity targets that we have set
in our Biodiversity Action Plans. We want to use this index to
report back up to the county structure and then, hopefully, develop
links into the national arena.
355. Does that index actually give some indication
as to the difference between the common and the rare?
(Mr Woodcock) It does indeed. What it is based on
is looking at the priority habitats listed under the Biodiversity
Action Plan and provides an index of the health, essentially,
of each of these habitats that might be in your individual land-holdings.
It is proving to be a useful tool and we are using it experimentally
on eight sites of our own at the moment. This is being extended
around East Anglia through use by a number of other organisations
to see how we can most effectively use this tool to report upwards.
What we are concerned about at the moment is double-counting.
We are worried about our individual companies saying "We
have achieved this" but that also being reported by the county
as an achievement to a national level. There is a danger of double-counting
on biodiversity at the moment.
Chairman
356. How far do you think the public understand
biodiversity?
(Mr Woodcock) I, personally, feel there is a problem
with that. There is a problem with the term that is used. I think
there is much more we can do with our customers to say "This
is what biodiversity is". I think we are trying to do that.
Generally, I think the terminology in the whole of this biodiversity
thing is very confusing for people.
357. Right. Simplify it for us. Give us a nice,
clear terminology to replace it all.
(Mr Woodcock) Biodiversity used to be nature conservation,
I think.
(Dr Spray) Yes, nature conservation used to be what
it is. I think the way forward is to link-up these things so that
people recognise that they are all part of one framework. The
key thing is to go with the Government's quality of life indicators.
We have also developed, in Northumbrian Water, a wetland biodiversity
indicator, where we have looked at, both nationally and regionally,
trends in bird populations, using the same methodology as the
Government to take account of rarities and using the DETR's statistics
department and the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology,
to look at wetland bird populations in marshes, on reservoirs
and in rivers. That is something you can visually show people,
and that is getting to the public an image. That is what it is
about. One of the reasons we went into the otter was that it is
a very high profile image—it is cuddly, it is conservation,
it is top of the food chain etc. It says an awful lot about water
quality, water abundance and things like that.
358. All right. So what about biodiversity,
or nature conservation, of those things that are nasty? You have
already told us you have got this problem about sewage going into
the sea, or not going into it, and you have got problems of your
reservoirs where, perhaps, conservation conflicts. North West
Water used to supply our household with a little creature that
came occasionally through the water supply. They have eliminated
that in some way. What has happened to that little creature that
came in the water supply?
(Mr Woodcock) We are talking about public health first.
I can help there because one of the things we have got on our
Biodiversity Action Plan is dealing with the negative effects,
for example, of the non-native crayfish. We are trying, as part
of our Biodiversity Action Plan within Anglian Water to actively
remove this specimen from our reservoirs and rivers.
359. Does that also apply to various invasive
forms of water weed?
(Dr Spray) Yes, absolutely.
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