THE threat of a “serious water shortage” as early as the spring has prompted Yorkshire Water to apply for a drought permit to extract more water from the River Wharfe.

An “exceptional shortage of rain” has been cited in the application to increase the annual abstraction limit at its Lobwood pumping station near Addingham.

Yorkshire Water has been maximising the amount of water it takes from rivers in order to balance reservoir levels. As a result, it is forecasting that it will hit its annual abstraction limit for the Wharfe before the end of the year and the drought permit will ensure it has the flexibility to maximise river supplies for the remainder of the year.

If the dry spell continues, the Bradford-based company is also planning to submit permit applications for reservoirs in the north, north west and south west areas.

The Environment Agency says in 2018 Yorkshire experienced one of the hottest summers on record combined with exceptional lack of rainfall and “whilst the weather may now be changing to more usual wintry conditions, water resources across Yorkshire Area are already affected, and in need of significant replenishment.

“Following the exceptionally dry summer, we have seen much less rainfall than is typical for this time of year. Despite some rainfall in localised areas, there has been a steady decline in reservoir and river levels across Yorkshire.

“Yorkshire needs higher-than-average rainfall over the next few months to ensure good water supplies next spring and summer, and avoid the risk of water restrictions.”

In a consultation document for the permit application the agency says:

  • many river catchments across Yorkshire are experiencing below normal or notably low flows for the time of year
  • groundwater levels at monitoring sites in strategically important aquifers are now mainly below average for the time of year
  • most of the land across Yorkshire is classified as ‘dry’ due to the lack of sustained rainfall.
  • Met Office climate data shows that the sixth-month period ending in October was the third driest for the River Aire and the River Calder catchments since 1910
  • by the end of October reservoir stocks were at about 45% of the maximum, approximately 25% below the long-term average though still above the historic minimum.

Drought permits allow temporary changes to some of the conditions under which water companies operate, allowing them to reduce the amount of water released from reservoirs to support river levels downstream or take more water from rivers to use for supply, giving reservoir levels more chance to recover.

Both these actions allow water companies to increase the chances of reservoirs refilling over winter when the weather is wetter, and giving a healthier start to next spring and summer in terms of water stocks.

The new application would allow Yorkshire Water to increase its annual abstraction limit from the River Wharfe at Lobwood by 3,655 million litres to 27,397m litres until March 2019. The mean flow of the river at Addingham is 14,254 litres per second.

Depending on the flow in the river, the drought permit will reduce the amount of water released from Grimwith Reservoir which was built in 1864 by the Bradford Corporation. It can hold up to 21,772m litres of water and is Yorkshire Water’s biggest. At present the water level is more than 10 metres down on its usual height. Its average depth is usually 14.8m.

A Yorkshire Water spokesperson said: “During the heatwave this summer, we saw demand for water increase by up to 200 million litres per day, which is more than the daily demand of a city the size of Leeds. The weather has also been unusually dry, with some areas of Yorkshire seeing the driest period on record through the summer and autumn. This has meant that not only have we needed to take more water from our reservoirs to meet demand, but there also hasn’t been the rainfall to replenish stocks.

“To help us refill our reservoirs over the winter we are applying to the Environment Agency for drought permits. The variations are temporary and we will return to our normal permitted levels on 31 March 2019, or sooner if we receive sufficient rainfall. The permit applications won’t have any impact on customer supplies, but we would always ask customers to play their part by using water wisely, even during the winter months to help reservoir levels recover. You can find out what you can do to help at yorkshirewater.com.

“Alongside the Drought Permit applications we are managing resources by moving water around the region using our unique grid system and this year we will spend £75m this year on preventing and fixing leaks. The recent hot, dry weather has led to us fixing 50% more bursts due to ground drying out causing earth movement and we currently have as many teams out fixing bursts as we did during the ‘beast from the east’.

“We have set ourselves a target of reducing leakage by 40% by 2025. To help us achieve this we have brought in an extra 200 leakage inspectors and to detect bursts quicker, we’ve installed 4,600 acoustic loggers across the network and are going to fit over 30,000 more while we have also successfully trialled the use of drones and satellites.”

A drought order is already being sought for a Wharfedale reservoir that has run low. The Environment Agency says the order for Carr Bottom Reservoir, at Burley Woodhead, will ‘help to preserve dwindling water stocks’.