Catchment management

We work with landowners to reduce pollution of the water cycle through agriculture

The Water Framework Directive

Through catchment management, supply outages due to water quality issues can be reduced. This can also help to deliver Water Framework Directive (WFD) benefits. The WFD is a European Commission directive that has set an objective to bring every river up to good ecological status by 2027.

Catchment management activities can help to achieve this by improving the quality of surface water run off that rivers receive.

Saving money and protecting the environment

Catchment management schemes provide cost saving solutions to water quality risks and help to protect the environment. They can provide a cheaper and more environmentally-friendly way of addressing issues and changing behaviours at source, rather than relying on unsustainable, expensive solutions during the water treatment process.

For every £1 we invest in catchment management we gain £4 in wider environmental benefit, and save between £2 and £20 in water treatment costs for removing pesticides, helping to reduce our customers’ bills.

Priority catchments

Through extensive risk mapping, catchment walkovers and data analysis, we have identified areas where water quality is especially sensitive to how the land and crops are managed. We refer to these as our priority catchments.

Priority catchments provide a focus for our support, each with an expert agricultural advisor to build relationships with farmers and provide guidance on how to bring maximum benefit to the environment and farm. We’re currently working in 44 priority catchments –14 surface water catchments and 30 groundwater catchments.

Farming for water

Farming for Water is our programme of schemes and grants that have been developed for farmers, land owners and estate managers.

It provides a comprehensive framework that enables us to reduce the amount of pesticides found in untreated water across our region.

We do this by treating every catchment and farmer we work with individually, and our dedicated team work hard to develop a unique approach for each one.

We’ve developed a range of tools which take account of the different pressures on water quality, and differing land management techniques, which help us to deliver clean water in the most sustainable way possible.

Farming for Water showcases everything to we have to offer that can help the agricultural community deliver great water stewardship.

Innovating to improve water quality

Not all of our catchment work is just about drinking water quality, we’re also exploring how our work with farmers might benefit catchments impacted by waste water activities. We’ve been trialling two innovative approaches to tackling these issues

Phosphate socks are large tubular mesh structures, filled with different ‘sorbing’ materials, used to reduce run off, entrained sediments and nutrients.

Commonly used in the United States of America to control sediments from construction sites, we’ve been trialling them on agricultural land to reduce levels of phosphate entering watercourses, with the aim to improve water quality

In Nottinghamshire we’re investigating the benefits of under sowing a commercial maize crop with a range of different cover crops to mitigate diffuse pollution to ground and surface waters.

Diffuse pollution is the release of potential pollutants from a range of activities that on their own might be innocuous, but when combined over a whole catchment area, could have a more damaging effect. We try to mitigate the effects of diffuse pollution through run-off from areas that include:

The soils in Nottinghamshire are sandy, which decreases the water holding capacity of soil. This increases the risk of nitrate being lost to waterbodies, which can lead to a reduction in water quality.

Crops like maize provide ground cover for wildlife, reduce soil erosion and absorb residual nutrients in the soil once harvested.