Tough new controls on abstraction could help protect fish and other wildlife in Britain’s rivers. A draft Water Bill, published yesterday, introduces a new licensing system for companies and farmers who want to take water out of rivers, boreholes and springs.
While the Environment Agency currently issues abstraction licences, conservation groups and angling bodies claim controls are too lax. Plans for hundreds of thousands of extra homes in parts of the Home Counties will see demand for water rocket.
If MPs agree to the proposals, when the bill is debated later this year, an environmental assessment will have to be carried out as part of the application procedure. English Nature estimates 350 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) are affected by water abstraction.
Changes in the world’s climate are affecting the seasonal supply of water, making its management more and more critical. English Nature believes the bill will help build up a better picture of patterns of demand for water, enabling authorities to plan ahead and move away from the ‘boom and bust’ of winter flooding followed by summer droughts.
Hans Schutten, English Nature’s freshwater adviser said: “Our wildlife depends on a delicate balance of water throughout the seasons and the effects of too little water at the wrong time of year can be devastating to fish such as salmon and trout who rely on good flow of water in our rivers, or birds such as bittern that need a good supply of food in the reed beds they inhabit.
“By licensing all significant abstractions as proposed in the Water Bill, it will ensure that there is a level playing field where all abstractors have to abide by environmental regulations. It should also help to solve the problems where current over-abstraction damages wildlife sites.”
Abstraction has reduced rivers in some parts of the country to a trickle in summer, reducing oxygen levels and allowing algae to multiply. Other streams where anglers fished a generation or two ago have long since dried up.
