Water firm cuts massive waste

Aug 10 2007 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

WATER company United Utilities has announced it has outperformed its leakage target for the first time in five years – but 468m litres a day is still going to waste.

Figures revealed the company has exceeded its imposed target of 470m litres daily.

It is the equivalent of the contents of almost 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools being wasted in the region every day.

But United Utilities says that it has more than halved its leakage figures in the last 15 years and eventually the exercise will stop being value for money for its customers.

Simon Boyland, supply and demand manager for United Utilities, said: “This is good news for our customers and good news for the environment – it shows that the huge efforts we have been making to reduce leakage are paying off.”

The company says it will have invested £70m in the five years between 2005 and 2010 to fight leakage.

Their technology includes more than 5,000 electronic transmitters which detect leaking water mains metres below ground that would otherwise be undetectable

United Utilities detects and repairs 700 leaks in the North West each week.

One third of all leaks come from properties, with the rest hidden under roads, fields and buildings. Mr Boyland added: “Leakage is never going to be zero but our job is to manage it.

“We have more than halved leakage since the 1990s and have now reached the point where it stops becoming value for money for customers to reduce levels much further.

Leakage targets are set by water regulator Ofwat.

As United Utilities has outperformed its target for the year 2006- 2007, Ofwat now demands it reduced leakage by a further 5m litres a day – to 465m – by 2009-2010.

Meanwhile, trade union GMB yesterday accused Ofwat of failing in its duty to protect water customers, and said that at a national level leakages were unacceptable.

Gary Smith, national secretary for the water industry, said: “Ofwat has permitted the owners to take billions of pounds of profit from water industry customers rather than insisting that the industry’s priority should be to fix the leaks.

“The Labour government should now step in to insist on an investment programme in this monopoly industry to fix these unacceptable levels of leakages.”

vickyanderson