We invest hundreds of millions of pounds each year on our capital programme, to maintain and improve water and wastewater services across our region. This involves laying new pipelines, repairing existing mains and sewers, installing water treatment processes and improving our sewage treatment works.
In 2009/10, we assessed the ecological, archaeological and cultural heritage impacts of 145 schemes at 278 locations. As this was the last year in our five-year business plan, we began fewer engineering projects, meaning both figures fell significantly from the previous year.
The screening process is undertaken by our Ecology and Heritage team, using a specialist in-house Geographical Information System and biodiversity database to help check for important wildlife, archaeology and heritage sites. This can range from listed buildings and conservation areas to Scheduled Monuments and Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
The team scopes the project in finer detail by carrying out field surveys. This gives us the opportunity to examine the working area for other ecology or heritage issues, such as protected or rare species, and assess the impacts to the habitat such as works affecting trees and hedgerows.
If necessary, we will contact the local biological records centre to gain further information on the ecology of the proposed working site. Additionally, we will liaise with statutory or non-statutory bodies, such as English Heritage, Natural England, the National Trust, and local wildlife trusts, as well as county archaeologist and borough ecologists, to avoid impacting sites that are of interest to ecology and heritage. It is our policy to ensure legal compliance to minimise our impacts on the natural and historic environment.
In 2009/10, we checked 159 potential sales or leases of our land to ensure that ecology and heritage issues were taken into account during these transactions. Nine of these were in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and two were in a legally protected Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Last year, we reviewed the ecology and heritage knowledge and expertise of all of the contractors bidding to manage engineering projects as part of our proposed capital programme for 2010 – 15. In particular, we wrote a contract specification that described our approach to ecology, heritage and flood risk management and set out requirements for contractors looking to work with us.
We also reviewed the experience of the ecology and heritage managers being proposed as leads on these issues by contractors. All of the potential contractors were then scored on their level of experience and understanding in ecology, heritage and flood risk, with results feeding into the overall assessment and award of the final contracts.
With a network of pipes that, laid end to end, is long enough to stretch more than twice around the world, things can sometimes go wrong. When a water main bursts or a sewer or manhole floods, this can cause environmental damage. In these situations, we work hard to quickly identify and contain any pollution, then clear up any damage and restore the environment. Often, this involves working with landowners, regulators and other environmental stakeholders to ensure that our approach is responsible, timely and appropriate, and that we can prevent any repeat damage.
Following pollution events in some Sites of Special Scientific Interest last year, we reviewed our procedures for responding to emergency events in protected wildlife and heritage sites. Specialists from our environmental strategy, business resilience, asset management, ecology and heritage, and operational teams looked at what we do in these situations and how we could improve our approach. We also met with Natural England, the Government's nature conservation advisors and regulators, to explore what we could do better.
As a result of this work, we are making improvements to our in-house Geographical Information System which is used by our operational teams to check areas affected by emergency events or where engineering work is planned. We are also developing an awareness-raising pack for contractors to re-engage them on the need to protect biodiversity and the natural environment when dealing with water or wastewater emergencies.
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