Climate concerns present a watertight case for cracking down on leaks

Published Date: 09 October 2008

CLIMATE change has two main impacts on Scottish Water. One is adaptation. Scottish Water must adapt its systems to cope with the changing climate.
The second is mitigation. It is important for Scottish Water to mitigate its carbon emissions. One way of doing this is to reduce the amount of drinking water its treatment works have to make. This is where tackling leakage comes in.By cracking down on leaks, Scottish Water can reduce the amount of power required for treatment works and pumping, which helps protect the environment and can reduce a water supply's carbon footprint.Scottish Water recently doubled the number of engineers and technicians to ensure that reducing leakage remains a top priority for the business. Over the past two years, Scottish Water has reduced reported leakage by 180 million litres of drinking water a day. Paul Kerr, head of leakage, says: "While this achievement is on par with the companies south of the Border when they started tackling leakage, it is still not good enough. Leakage has become more of an issue with climate change, the increasing cost of treating water to the highest standards and ensuring that we deliver better-quality drinking water to our customers while increasing efficiency."When we agreed targets in 2006 we were starting from cold. We were reducing leakage as well as installing the measurement equipment which we need to identify which parts of the water network were leaking more and where the biggest volumetric reductions would come from."We have met the target to install the measurement equipment known as District Metered Areas (DMAs) with over 94 per cent of all properties in Scotland now covered."With a clearer picture of leakage through the analysis of the DMA information, we have introduced more resources and increased investment to tackle this issue more effectively. We have gone into the market place to get specialist teams we need to supplement our in-house resource to ensure we meet our targets in the future."Scottish Water's main focus is to work towards the Economic Level of Leakage (ELL). This is the level where it is more costly to repair the leak than the cost saving due to the value of the water leaking from the system. By 2010 we aim to reach the halfway point and we are aiming to be on target to hit the ELL by 2014."Communications officer, Scottish