NI Water has published its final Water Resource & Supply Resilience Plan (WR&SRP) following public consultation - the water company says it has significantly changed the WR&SRP since its 2020 version.
Some of these changes include:
- A longer-term planning horizon from 25 to 50 years.
- Changing future weather patterns requires increased resilience to more frequent and extreme events. This includes planning for extreme drought events that are estimated to occur once every 200 years.
- Increased focus on environmental sustainability in support of carbon Net Zero targets.
The company says it has made significant improvements in water resilience for customers since the last WR&SRP was launched.
The new WR&SRP aims to build on this work, ensuring continued high levels of leakage detection, sustained investment in water mains and water efficiency initiatives.
Launching the final plan, NI Water commented:
"With the appropriate investment, the WR&SRP serves as a blueprint and pathway to enable a secure, reliable water supply for Northern Ireland, ensuring that the region's infrastructure can withstand challenges into the future."
The water company is required to develop, consult upon and publish a Water Resources Management Plan and accompanying Drought Plan every 6 to 8 years.
The plan, which assesses and defines the need for investment in sustainable water resources infrastructure over a long-term planning period, to improve resilience of supplies to all NI Water’s customers, aligned with the timing of and supports the upcoming Price Control determination.
The last plan, which was published at the end of March 2020, combined the two reports as a Water Resource and Supply Resilience Plan (WR&SRP 2020) - the 2025 plan follows the same model.
NI Water developed the WR&SRP with input from key stakeholders, including the Department for Infrastructure, the Utility Regulator, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Consumer Council NI.
NI Water has not excluded any information from the WR&SRP for either commercial confidentiality or for national security interests under Article 71(10) of the Water & Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006.
Click here to download the main report
Click here to access supporting documents
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