Water Abstraction

(asked on 30th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will provide a definition of sustainable abstraction in respect of removing water from chalk steam (a) aquifers and (b) rivers; and what criterion his Department takes into account in protecting such water environments from environmental damage.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 5th July 2021

Restoring England’s internationally important chalk streams is a Government priority.

The Environment Agency (EA) regulates abstraction from chalk streams and aquifers in the same way as from any other source. It set out its approach in a recent policy paper, Managing Water Abstraction.

An abstraction licence is unsustainable if:

  • the River Basin Management Plan actions cannot be achieved because:
    • it contributes to a reason for not achieving the water body flow objective
    • it has caused or contributed to deterioration against the current RBMP baseline
    • increasing abstraction within the limits of the licence risks deterioration
  • it is affecting or could affect a site designated under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017
  • it is affecting or could affect a site designated under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (Sites of Special Scientific Interest)
  • it could compromise Biodiversity 2020 objectives

For rivers, the EA uses the Environmental Flow Indicator as the default flow required to support Good Ecological Status in water bodies and to prevent deterioration. For existing abstraction, local ecological evidence is used to show whether an abstraction is causing environmental damage.

For groundwater, the EA uses 4 tests to assess groundwater bodies:

  1. Groundwater balance - a numerical quantification based on fully licensed abstraction, recent actual abstraction and recharge.
  2. Check of the water resource availability of any rivers fed by the groundwater body.
  3. Assessment of any saline or other intrusions occurring within the unit because of groundwater abstraction.
  4. Check of the quality of any wetlands fed by the groundwater body.

The EA is developing long term plans to reduce our reliance on chalk streams. The publication of the CaBA Chalk Stream Restoration Strategy later this year will set out recommendations on how to restore and protect England’s chalk streams. The EA is committed to working with all chalk stream stakeholders to better understand what more it can do in both the short and long term to make a difference on the ground.

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