Managing Water Abstraction Reforming Abstraction and Modernising Regulation Richard Austen Water Resources Manager - Regulation 1 st July 2019
What does Abstraction Reform mean in 2019? • It is not the proposals in the consultation response of 2016. • It is about: • Achieving the goals set out in the Abstraction plan. • Finding what are the blockers in achieving those goals? • Finding innovative ways to remove blockers. • Modernising the way we regulate abstraction. 2
Changes in water resources planning • NIC call for increased drought resilience • New National Framework to set out needs (across sectors and across the nation) and break down barriers to collaboration • Regional and inter-regional planning to find the solutions • RAPID and funding to make sure solutions are ‘shovel ready’ • National Policy Statement to unblock barriers to development of new infrastructure.
Priorities for regional groups • Building resilience to drought and other pressures on water resources • Doing this cost-effectively , considering regional and inter-regional solutions , including transfers • Taking account of wider needs • actively embedding environmental improvement • working across sectors (developing shared infrastructure where appropriate) 4
The role of a national framework • December 2019 • Articulating national and regional water needs • Setting out expectations for demand management, new resources and transfers – Reviewing plans against those expectations – Understanding demand from other sectors and removing barriers to collaboration 5
Developing a stronger Catchment Focus • National CaBA Working Group for Water Resources established • Launched 4 Initial Priority Catchments • Looking to increase the number of Priority Catchments shortly. 6
Priority Catchments – national objectives • Develop and test innovative solutions to achieve greater access to water and address unsustainable abstraction • Promote a catchment based approach for water resources by providing examples of catchment based management of abstraction, as models for other catchments to follow • Develop new abstraction licensing strategies for priority catchments by 2020 / 2021 • Area teams develop local objectives and success criteria • Identify common ground between catchments
Stakeholder workshops What are the current blockers to improving access to water? South Forty Foot Breakfast event 11 Dec 2018 60 – EA lead Darren Smith South Forty Foot Number of ideas proposed Idle and Torne 50 Cam & Ely Ouse and East Suffolk 40 What are the 30 opportunities to improve access to 20 water sustainably? 10 0 Fine Tuning Flexibility IDB Managing On-line Rapid Other SW and and Highest discharges River flows water GW Flows trading 8
Rapid trading • Communicate the difference between ‘flexible abstraction’ and ‘rapid trading’: • Review process to understand where we can improvements now: • Improved guidance • Potential for new application forms and process • Working to identify approaches to be trialled in PCs: • Aggregating licence groups (East Suffolk and CAMEO) • Potential for pre-approved trades/catchment rules??? 9
High flows • Guidance for assessing high flows and how these can be licensed • Emerging issues • Removing seasonality • Compliance with eels regs • Process to enable high flow abstraction Education campaigns • Popular approach in all PCs • Looking to work with national stakeholders to develop ideas 10
CamEO Trial 1: HoF Notifications via Text Message The trial is exploring a move away from the existing method of notifying abstraction restrictions from the current phone-in system and letters by post to notification by text messaging to mobile phones. This will: - Improve access to water - Allow abstractors to react more quickly to changing water availability - Allow more effective planning. Trial start date: 1st July 2019
Water Resources Licensing Service Modernising the service - Digital Transformation 12
Cross regime Review our Digital working legislation permits WHY ARE WE MAKING THE Consistency Focus our in format and regulatory effort CHANGE TO determination EPR? Consistency in Consolidation Risk based regulation
Impacts of Dry Weather • Consciously stopped and slowed Priority Catchment work. • Provided real opportunities to test Access to Water work and trading. • External organizations have reported to us that they have stopped or slowed work on New Authorizations applications to deal with Dry Weather impacts. 14
Recommend
More recommend
