5 Reservoirs
63. Part 3 of the draft Bill implements an undertaking
in the Government response to the Pitt Review to update existing
reservoir safety legislation. Sir Michael's recommendations relating
to reservoir safety drew on the lessons learnt following the incident
at Ulley reservoir near Sheffield during the summer 2007 floods.
Unprecedented levels of rainfall led to excessive water flow through
a spillway and a very real threat that the dam would fail.[107]
The draft Bill's provisions make changes to the Reservoirs Act
1975:
- to require all reservoirs above
a minimum volume capacity (10,000 cubic metres above the natural
level of any part of the surrounding land) to be included on an
Environment Agency register;[108]
- to require the Environment Agency to classify
each relevant reservoir according to whether they pose a threat
to human life, or meet technical conditions (to be specified)
which in effect reduce the risk to a negligible level;
- to specify the duties of reservoir managers;
and
- to specify panel engineers' duties in relation
to reservoirs based on the level of risk.
64. Yorkshire Water and the NFU welcomed the shift
to risk based management but both considered the proposed structure
unduly clumsy and burdensome. The NFU explained that many small
reservoirs were on farms and provided an efficient way of reducing
summer abstractions, a practice encouraged by the Environment
Agency. The NFU argue that Defra's proposals would require a substantial
amount of time and money to be spent to compiling and submitting
the information required for the Environment Agency to determine
whether the reservoir represents a low or high risk. The NFU suggest
a pre-registration process would allow those reservoirs that are
low risk to be filtered out.[109]
65. Yorkshire Water echoed the NFU's comments. Mr
Hodgkin told us that the company had not been consulted on the
reservoir provisions, and that:
As currently drafted we would be required to provide
quite a lot of information and plans for what to do if things
go wrong, if I can put it in those terms, for all reservoirs,
whether they are high or low risk, and we think it will be more
sensible to first of all work out which of the reservoirs are
high risk and then do the detailed work on the high risk [ones]
rather than doing it for all of them.[110]
The Country Land & Business Association also
had misgivings about the potential administrative burden of the
provisions and found "no logical reason to move away from
the current 25,000 cubic metre threshold, especially when there
is clear evidence from the Environment Agency demonstrating that
there have been no significant failures within the last 40 years".[111]
66. The Environment Agency expressed a willingness
to discuss with the NFU potentially tying together the emergency
plan requirements under the draft Bill with the plans that are
already prepared by the Local Resilience Forums.[112]
In terms of the scope for exempting farm reservoirs more generally
from the draft Bill's provisions, however, the Agency appeared
to be less flexible.[113]
The Agency emphasised that although the thresholds for registering
reservoirs would be reduced to 10,000 cubic metres, "only
those that pose a risk to life would be required to have the same
level of supervision and periodic inspections by qualified civil
engineers as at present".[114]
Defra should
examine including a provision to establish a low-cost initial
assessment of smaller reservoirs. Reservoirs adjudged to be low
risk under such a system could be exempted from the panoply of
inspections and procedures currently set out in Part 3 of the
draft Bill.
67. Whatever the extent of the extra potential burden
for individual reservoirs, the number of reservoirs brought within
the scope of registration would be increased. Mr Hodgkin said
that under the definition of reservoir used in the draft Bill,
the number of reservoirs across the country would more than double,
and that that would have implications for "already very stretched"
engineer resources.[115]
Water UK also cast doubt on the impact assessment's estimation
of the costs of implementing the draft Bill's reservoir safety
provisions due to the number of reservoirs that would fall under
the regime.[116]
68. The risk associated with reservoir failures (both
the probability of failure and the consequences of failure) are
comparable with the risks assessed for chemical and nuclear industry
sites. There is already a long standing emergency planning system
for major chemical plants (the COMAH regulations).[117]
These require local authorities to prepare and publicise an offsite
emergency plan for designated sites; a plan which is usually prepared
by the Local Resilience Forum. Such plans include advising those
at risk what to do in the event of an alarm and how they will
be warned. Defra should consider
whether the existing COMAH regulations might be extended to include
reservoirs.
69. Reservoirs may be covered by general business-wide
insurance polices. Where reservoirs are itemised as discrete insurable
risks the inspection and maintenance obligations imposed by the
legislation could reduce insurance premiums, thereby off-setting
some of the additional costs imposed by the Bill. If the Bill's
provisions were tuned to meet the requirements of the insurers
the cost of premiums might be lower still.
70. Defra should
examine with the insurance industry the scope for synergies between
the needs of insurance companies and the risk management aims
of the draft Bill, to minimise any additional cost for reservoir
owners.
71. Part 3 of the draft Bill introduces several offences,
which are similar to offences in the Reservoirs Act 1975, that
will be repealed in its entirety by this legislation. For example,
it will be an offence to obstruct a person authorised by the Environment
Agency to enter land on which a reservoir is situated to carry
out an inspection, survey or other operation to determine whether
any provisions of the legislation apply.[118]
Several of the offences under Part 3 are imprecisely defined,
for example:
- it is an offence for a reservoir
manager to fail to "keep a flood plan under review"
(clause 142(6)), and
- it is an offence to fail to take safety measures
"as soon as practicable after receiving the report"
(clause 135(3)).[119]
72. Offences
that are set out on the face of the Bill should be as clear as
possible. We recommend that Defra review the offences under Part
3 within a year of the Bill being enacted to ensure that they
are appropriate, enforceable and if necessary amended in the light
of experience.
107 See Pitt Final Report pages 301ff and the Environment
Agency: Review of Summer 2007 Floods case studies: Reservoir safety-learning
from Ulley. Back
108
A 10,000 cubic metre reservoir is the size of four Olympic swimming
pools, by comparison Kielder Water is 200 million cubic metres. Back
109
Ev 137 Back
110
Q 196 Back
111
Ev 151 Back
112
Qq 119-120 Back
113
Ev 28 Back
114
Ev 33 Back
115
Q 197 Back
116
Ev 169 Back
117
The Control of Major Accident Hazard Regulations (SI 1999/743)
as amended. Back
118
Clause 152 Back
119
Other offences which are not specifically defined include failure
to comply with clauses 135(3), 142(5) and (6), 127(3), 114(4). Back
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