Operational performance

Environment

All 33 bathing waters in NWL’s area passed the EU Mandatory Standard and 20 of these also met the more demanding Guideline Standard, despite poor weather in the summer of 2008. We are working with the EA to identify the impact of other stakeholders, including local authorities, highway authorities, farmers and land holders, on the quality of bathing waters.

All 158 (2008: 157) consented sewage treatment works met their required standards during the year. Improved operating practices based upon timely interventions from our enhanced performance monitoring system, together with focused capital maintenance investment, contributed to this performance. Significant investment was made at strategic works in Darlington, Sunderland and Browney (County Durham).

NWL continues to benefit from its ongoing investment in real time monitoring devices in the sewer network which provide information on flow levels. Further improvements linking this data with rainfall information allow operational teams to focus on significant overflows from the network which can cause pollution. The downward trend of pollution incidents over the last five years has been maintained. Last year, there were 94 incidents attributed to our assets, mainly from foul sewers and combined storm overflows (25 less than the previous year).

Intense rainfall during localised summer storms caused extensive flooding during the year with 829 properties flooded internally, well above the long term average and second only to 2005/06 with 1,160 properties. Investment to reduce the risk of sewer flooding has been increased. During the year, 20 schemes were completed to alleviate flooding risk for 114 properties and we improved 102 combined sewer overflows. This will further improve rivers and water courses, enhance their visual appearance and reduce pollution incidents.

The Right Honourable Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on his recent visit to view the radar.

Understanding the weather

We are committed to reducing the risk of flooding for our customers but the lack of reliable weather data in the north east has meant that predicting storms and the subsequent impact of rainfall on our sewerage network has been problematic.

We need access to information to make accurate network performance predictions and understand how our 16,000km long sewerage network copes in different weather conditions, including the severe localised storms we have seen in recent years.

We have joined forces with the Meteorological Office and the Environment Agency to install a £1 million rain radar at High Moorsley, near Durham City, which will record the location and intensity of rainfall. The central location of the radar will provide excellent coverage of the major urban areas, including those most vulnerable to flooding. The coverage we currently receive is in 5km grids but will reduce to 1km grids.

The radar will help us to focus flood alleviation work in the risk areas and help the Meteorological Office and the Environment Agency give more accurate and timely flood warnings. The rain radar is a perfect complement to the NWL sponsored network of 85 school weather stations as part of the Northumbrian Water GLOBE project. This unique project forms part of the international GLOBE programme, a network linking weatherstations in schools in 110 countries, the data from which can be used by us locally but which can also be accessed by scientists internationally including those at NASA.