Anglian Water has announced a significant investment of nearly half a billion pounds to protect the environment this year.
The water company is allocating an additional £100 million from shareholders to fund various initiatives, including the deployment of advanced technology, the creation of more than 100 new roles for a ‘spills taskforce,’ and improvements to the extensive sewer network. These efforts aim to reduce storm spills, prevent pollution, and safeguard the environment.
This funding is in addition to the company’s planned investment in its water recycling network, bringing the total investment for the year to almost half a billion pounds.
This marks the first time Anglian Water will invest over £1 billion in the region in a single year, laying the foundation for the next five years as part of the company’s proposed £9 billion business plan.
Director of Water Recycling for Anglian Water, Emily Timmins, said: “This is an unprecedented amount of money, directly injected into areas we know matter to our customers, and where we are not confident we are making headway with results.
“We know we need to reduce pollutions and storm spills, and we agree no number other than zero will do. As part of our intense focus on driving improvements, we are now starting to see the green shoots of recovery from our work and investments. We have the lowest level of sewer blockages in five years, have had no serious pollutions from our network of sewers in 14 months and are continuing to roll out smart sewers at a rapid pace to ensure we can predict and prevent more incidents event faster. Our plans will take time, but this boost from our shareholders means we can make even faster progress.”
Furthermore, the water company is leading the industry in reducing storm spills, with detailed improvement plans for all 1,471 sites in its network.
In the last five years, 10% of the storm overflows in the region have been completely stopped, and Anglian Water aims to reduce the total negative impact on rivers in the region from 17% to zero by 2030.
Specific examples of how the £100m will be invested, include:
- £34 million on public sewer cleaning and improvements in the top 100 highest risk areas, targeting thousands of blockages caused by wrongly disposed of fats, oils, greases and other unflushables identified by the installation of 30,000 high-tech monitors with AI to give early warning of problems before they arise
- Create more capacity in sewers in 50 hotspot locations across the region and an increase in storm water storage at water recycling centres so they can deal with more rainfall during extreme weather
- £5.5 million on investigating and removing excess groundwater from our systems in places like Grimston and Yaxley that have suffered sewerage problems related to the severe wet weather
- £13 million on improvements to water recycling centres including Peterborough, Ingoldmells and Whitlingham.
- New sustainable drainage systems in key hotspot areas, like Southend will slow surface water from entering the sewer network helping to prevent flooding and reduce storm spills
Emily added: “We’ve heard loud and clear from our customers, communities, passionate river groups and our regulators that we need to take action faster to address storm overflows and improve our pollution record. As our climate continues to change, as we saw last winter, we can expect more extremes of weather meaning the challenge we’re facing, in this region especially, is going to get even bigger.
“We want our customers to know that we’re investing in the right solutions which are proving successful and will have the most benefit for the environment now and in the future.”
Source :Anglian Water
