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Post by beachball on Jun 1, 2011 8:43:12 GMT
As it has been the Driest spring for 100 years and is set to stay dry for the foreseeable future what are the rules governing water extraction in our area by the local water authorities and farm land owners for irrigation etc, and what monitoring of this do the E.A do to make sure our rivers don't dry up completely, best regards Malc.
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Post by lowfieldlakes on Jun 1, 2011 9:08:11 GMT
Roughly speaking - but dont take it as gospel: Anybody can take up to 20m3 per day from a watercourse without a formal licence, subject to prior approval / notification to the EA. Any amount above this requires full licencing and incures a cost. The EA wont issue a licence to abstract if the water course cant take it or can issue a seasonal licence which only allows abstraction at certain times of the year. They also have the powers to write and suspend a licence in times of drought etc. Or to put it another way - they do have total powers to restrict and control abstraction from both water courses and groundwater. In most cases, watercourse levels and flow rates are subject to automated monitoring and criteria exist for determining when levels reach critcal point, requiring action.
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Post by beachball on Jun 1, 2011 9:13:04 GMT
Roughly speaking - but dont take it as gospel: Anybody can take up to 20m3 per day from a watercourse without a formal licence, subject to prior approval / notification to the EA. Any amount above this requires full licencing and incures a cost. The EA wont issue a licence to abstract if the water course cant take it or can issue a seasonal licence which only allows abstraction at certain times of the year. They also have the powers to write and suspend a licence in times of drought etc. Or to put it another way - they do have total powers to restrict and control abstraction from both water courses and groundwater. Thanks for that bud lets just hope they can keep on top of it with all the cut-backs if they have not got the officers to do the monitoring it'll be open to abuse i think.regards Malc.
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Post by musselman on Jun 1, 2011 11:19:35 GMT
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Post by envagencyyorkshire on Jun 2, 2011 12:10:11 GMT
Q. As it has been the Driest spring for 100 years and is set to stay dry for the foreseeable future what are the rules governing water extraction in our area by the local water authorities and farm land owners for irrigation etc, and what monitoring of this do the E.A do to make sure our rivers don't dry up completely, best regards Malc.
Julie Dracup (Senior Environmental Planner) writes:
A. Everyone who takes more than 20m3 of water per day from our rivers and the ground need an abstraction licence which controls how much water can be taken and when. In areas where resources are under pressure licences have conditions on them called Hands off Flows. The HOF controls abstraction during dry periods by restricting the amount that can be taken depending on river levels - so for example some licences have to stop abstracting when the flows in the River Derwent at Buttercrambe reach 503Ml/d. They can only resume abstraction once flows increase again. We monitor all our abstraction licences by visits from our Environment Officers. In dry weather visits are focused on our higher risk catchments and those where we have large numbers of spray irrigators and other abstractors who take large quantities of water from the environment. If we were to have a drought then there are additional measures that we can impose to control our abstractors and protect our rivers. Some small headwater streams do dry out naturally in the summer and this is due to underlying geology or the lack of rainfall and not abstraction.
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